TWAIN 


His  LIFE  AND  WORK 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 


BY 


WILL  M.  CLEMENS 


1892 

THE  CLElMENS   PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
San  Francisco 


Copyright,  1891, 

BY  WILL  M.  CLEMENS. 

All  Rights  Reserved. 

LOAN  STACK 


PRESS  OF  W.  L.  MITCHELL, 
SAN  FRANCISCO. 


CONTENTS. 


i.  PREFACE 7 

2:  SAMUEL  LANGHORNE  CLEMENS 13 

.  3.  IN  NEVADA  AND  CALIFORNIA 37 

4.  ONE  OF  THE  INNOCENTS 67 

5.  His  FIRST  LITERARY  SUCCESS 80 

6.  MARRIAGE 101 

7.  IN  ENGLAND  AND  GERMANY 114 

8.  His  LATER  WORKS 129 

9.  THE  LECTURE  PLATFORM 146 

10.  MARK  TWAIN  AT  HOME 165 

11.  As  A  BUSINESS  MAN 189 

12.  GEMS  FROM  MARK  TWAIN 198 


I. 

PREFACE, 


From  the  days  of  "Yankee  Doodle" 
and  the  '  'Frogs  of  Windham,"  two  gems 
of  early  American  humor  written  in  the 
Revolutionary  period,  until  near  the  close 
of  the  war  of  the  Rebellion,  the  recog 
nized  American  humorist,  the  wit  who 
could  cause  a  laugh  to  go  Tippling,  bub 
bling  around  the  world,  was  a  creation 
unknown  to  American  literature.  How 
ever,  out  of  respect  and  admiration  for 
their  genius,  their  wit  and  humor,  we 
must  not  fail  in  giving  proper  credit  to 
Francis  Hopkinson,  Samuel  Peters,  John 


8  Mark  Twain 


Trumbull,  George  F.  Hopkins,  William 
T.  Thompson,  Seba  Smith,  Joseph  C. 
Neal,  Orpheus  C.  Kerr,  George  H. 
Derby  and  a  host  of  others,  for  bringing 
out  in  the  American  prints,  those  native 
characteristics,  thedrollness  of  the  yankee 
and  the  wit  of  the  early  days,  but  not 
until  after  the  Rebellion  did  America 
produce  a  humorist  of  world- wide  reputa 
tion.  When  civil  strife  was  ended,  and 
the  American  began  a  new  career,  almost  a 
new  existence,  there  came  to  the  surface 
a  new  school  of  native  humor.  The 
names  of  Mark  Twain,  Artemus  Ward, 
Josh  Billings  and  one  or  two  others,  be 
came  household  words.  Their  funny 
sayings  caused  the  Englishman  to  smile 
between  his  bites  of  beef.  Their  droll 
humor  forced  our  German  cousin  to  shake 
his  sides  with  laughter.  Their  witty 
bon  mots  occasioned  prolonged  mirth  from 
our  friends  in  France.  Not  until  then 
did  we  become  known  as  a  nation  of 
humorists,  and  from  that  day  the  fame 
of  our  wits  has  extended  throughout  the 
entire  world.  To-day  a  ripple  of  mirth 


His  Life  and  Work. 


starting  on  the  banks  of  Mud  Flat  Creek, 
will  end  in  a  hurricane  of  laughter  on  the 
Thames  or  the  Seine. 

There  was  something  so  purely  Amer 
ican  in  the  humor  of  Mark  Twain,  that 
his  work  soon  made  for  him  a  place  in  na 
tive  literature.  As  a  representative  of 
American  life  and  character  his  name 
extended  even  beyond  the  confines  of  the 
continent  of  Europe,  into  all  lands  and 
among  all  peoples.  In  Paris  one  cannot 
purchase  a  Bible  at  the  book  stall,  but 
one  may  find  "  Roughing  It"  at  every  cor 
ner.  In  Rome,  "The  Innocents  Abroad" 
is  one  of  the  staples  in  the  book  marts. 
In  Hongkong  you  will  find  Mark  Twain. 
Everywhere  they  read  him. 

The  career  of  Mark  Twain  is  a  ro 
mance.  His  life  is  a  curious  medley  of 
pathos  and  poverty,  with  an  occasional 
laugh  to  help  along  over  the  rough  places. 
He  w"as  a  wild,  reckless  boy,  a  poor 
printer,  not  even  a  good  journalist,  an 
adventurer,  a  wanderer.  He  was  a  sort 
of  human  kaleidoscope .  He  then  became 
a  wit,  a  scholar,  a  public  speaker,  a  man  of 


xo  Mark  Twain 


family  and  a  millionaire.  All  this  is  but 
typical  of  America,  of  American  life  and 
American  character. 

Mark  Twain  is  more  than  a  mere  Punch 

and  Judy  show.     With   his  droll  humor 

there  comes  information.     He  gives  the 

reader  a  full  dinner,  not  merely  dessert. 

He  tells  you  more  about  the  Mississippi 

river  than   an   old    steamboatman.     He 

gives  you  a  world  of  information  about 

Germany  and  Switzerland.     He  is  better 

than  a  guide  book   for  the  Holy  Land. 

What  that  greater  genius  Charles  Dickens 

has  done  for  fiction,  Mark  Twain  does  for 

humor.     He   is  an  ideal    reporter.     He 

minutely  tells  us  all  about  a  thing,  tells 

us  what  he  sees  and   hears,    describes  a 

man,  a  mule  or  a  monarchy  in  excellent 

form,  and  makes  one  laugh  at  the  same 

time. 

Some  years  ago  I  was  prompted  to 
write  the  genial  Mr.  Clemens  for  an 
introduction  or  preface  to  a  little  volume 
of  mine,  long  since  buried  by  the  sands 
of  time.  His  reply  was  this: 


His  Ltfe  and  Work*  ix 

Hartford,  Conn..  Nov.  18. 
"WILL  M.  CLEMENS. 

*  'My  Dear  Friend :    Your 

letter  received.  God  bless  your  heart.  I 
would  like  ever  so  much  to  comply  with  your 
request,  but  I  am  thrashing  away  at  my  new 
book,  and  am  afraid  that  I  should  not  find  time 
to  write  my  own  epitaph,  in  case  I  was  suddenly 
called  for. 

" Wishing  you  and  your  book  well,  believe  me, 
"Yours  truly, 

SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS." 

Not  long  ago  the  gifted  humorist  sent 
me  a  printed  slip  of  his  career,  taken 
from  "Men  of  the  Time."  Upon  the 
margin  of  this,  he  wrote  the  following: 

"Mv  DEAR  CLEMENS: 

"I  haven't  any  humor 
ous  biography — the  facts  don't  admit  of  it.  I 
had  this  sketch  from  "Men  of  the  Time"  printed 
on  slips  to  enable  me  to  study  my  history  at  my 
leisure. 

S.  L.  CLEMENS." 

By  nature,  a  serious,  thoughtful  man, 
he  is  deeply  in  earnest  at  times,  yet  sel 
dom  has  he  ventured  to  deal  with  the 
pathetic  in  his  writings.  Occasionally 
he  pens  a  careful,  serious  communication, 
like  the  following,  for  instance,  which  he 
addressed  to  a  young  friend  of  mine; 


12  Mark  Twain 


Hartford,  Jan.  16,  1881. 
"MY  DEAR  BOY: 

How  can  I  advise  another 
man  wisely,  out  of  such  a  capital  as  a  life  filled 
with  mistakes?  Advise  him  how  to  avoid  the 
like?  No — for  opportunities  to  make  the  same 
mistakes  do  not  happen  to  any  two  men.  Your 
own  experiences  may  possibly  teach  you,  but 
another  man's  can't.  I  do  not  know  anything 
for  a  person  to  do  but  just  peg  along,  doing  the 
things  that  offer,  and  regretting  them  the  next 
day.  It  is  my  way  and  everybody's. 
'  'Truly  yours, 

S.  L.  CLEMENS.'* 

In  this  modest  volume  I  do  not  attempt 
to  analyze  the  humor  of  Mark  Twain. 
As  Howells  says:  " Analyses  of  humor 
are  apt  to  leave  one  rather  serious,  and  to 
result  in  an  entire  volatilization  of  the 
humor."  There  is  romance,  and  adven 
ture,  and  thrilling  interest  surrounding 
the  life  of  the  prince  of  humorists,  and  I 
have  endeavored  to  gather  together  some 
of  these  interesting  facts.  His  satire  and 
wit  speak  for  themselves. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


His  Life  and  Work. 


II. 
SAMUEL  LANQHORNE  CLEMENS. 


There  is  more  or  less  obscurity  sur 
rounding  the  ancestry  and  birth  of  Mark 
Twain.  His  ancestors  were  of  Dutch  and 
English  extraction.  The  Clemens  family 
extended  back  to  Nicholas  Clemens,  who 
lived  in  Holland,  early  in  the  last  century. 
Upon  the  maternal  side,  the  Langhornes 
were  of  English  birth. 

In  the  days  of  the  Revolution  there 
came  to  America  three  sturdy  pioneers- 
bearing  the  Clemens  name.  One  of  these 
settled  in  Virginia,  another  in  Pennsyl 
vania.  The  former  prospered  in  the 
southern  colony  and  the  name  became 
well  known  in  the  South,  more  especially 


Mark  Twain 


in  the  political  history  of  that  section 
early  in  the  present  century.  Jeremiah 
Clemens  was  a  United  States  senator  from 
Alabama,  and  a  congressman,  a  judge, 
and  other  dignitaries  bore  the  name. 

John  Marshall  Clemens,  the  father  of 
Mark  Twain,  was  one  of  a  fine  Virginia 
family,  a  man  of  brain  and  force  of  char 
acter.  He  migrated  to  Kentucky  and 
soon  thereafter  to  Adair  county,  in  Ten 
nessee.  He  was  married  there  in  Fen  tress 
county  to  Miss  Langhorne,  a  warm 
hearted,  domestic  woman,  with  great 
emotional  depths.  The  family  fled  from 
those  vast  landed  possessions  in  Ten 
nessee,  so  graphically  described  in  "The 
Gilded  Age,"  and  crossed  the  river  into 
Missouri  in  1829,  locating  in  the  town  of 
Florida,  in  Monroe  count)^.  A  few  months 
after  their  arrival,  Samuel  Langhorne 
Clemens  first  saw  the  light  of  day  on  the 
30th  of  November,  1835.  Three  years 
later  the  family  removed  to  Hannibal,  a 
river  town  in  Marion  county. 

In  1840  the  elder  Clemens  filled  the 
ancient  and  honorable  office  of  Justice  of 


His  Life  and  Work.  15 


the  Peace.  He  wa^  a  stern,  unbending 
man  of  sterling,  common  sense,  and  was, 
indeed,  the  autocrat  of  the  little  dingy 
room  on  Bird  street,  where  he  held  his 
court  and  preserved  order  in  the  village. 
The  court  room  fairly  indicated  the  rustic 
simplicity  of  the  people,  and  the  frugal 
manner  in  which  Judge  Clemens  lived 
and  transacted  business.  The  furniture 
consisted  of  a  dry  goods  box,  which 
served  the  double  purpose  of  a  desk  for 
the  judge  and  a  table  for  the  lawyers, 
three  or  four  rude  stools  and  a  puncheon 
bench  for  the  jury.  Here  on  court  days 
when  the  judge  climbed  upon  his  three 
legged  stool,  rapped  upon  the  box  with 
his  knuckles,  and  demanded  silence  in 
the  court,  it  was  fully  expected  that 
silence  would  reign  supreme.  As  a 
general  thing  the  rough  characters  who 
lounged  about  to  see  the  '  'wheels  of 
justice"  move,  bowed  submissively  to  the 
mandates  of  the  judge.  An  overbearing, 
turbulent  and  quarrelsome  man,  named 
Allen  B.  McDonald,  was  an  exception, 
and  many  a  time  he  had  violated  the  rules 


16  Mark  Twain 


and  been  rebuked  by  the  court.  Upon 
one  occasion  McDonald  was  plaintiff  in 
a  case  against  one  Jacob  Smith.  Judge 
Clemens  was  presiding  with  his  usual 
dignity,  and  the  court  room  was  filled 
with  witnesses  and  friends  of  the  parties 
to  the  suit.  One  Frank  Snyder,  a  peac- 
able  citizen,  had  given  his  testimony  in 
favor  of  defendant  Smith  and  resumed  his 
seat,  when  McDonald  with  an  exasperat 
ing  air  made  a  face  at  him.  As  quick  as 
a  flash  Snyder  whipped  out  an  old  pepper 
box  revolver  and  emptied  every  barrel  at 
McDonald,  hurting  no  one,  but  filling 
the  room  with  smoke  and  consternation. 
In  the  confusion  that  followed  Judge 
Clemens,  doubtless  remembering  Mc 
Donald's  turbulent  spirit,  instantly  con 
cluded  that  he  was  the  aggressor,  and 
seizing  a  hammer  that  lay  near  by,  he 
dealt  him  a  blow  that  sent  him  senseless 
and  quivering  to  the  floor.  The  court 
was  completely  master  of  the  situation. 
Being  a  kind-hearted  man,  he  was  greatly 
mortified  when  he  learned  that  he  had 
struck  the  wrong  fellow,  but  the  oldest 


His  Life  and  Work. 


inhabitant  never  heard  him  admit  that  it 
was  "a  lick  amiss."  His  death  occurred 
in  1843.  His  grave  in  Mount  Olivet 
cemetery,  near  Hannibal,  is  marked  by 
a  tasteful  monument  erected  by  his  son. 
Hannibal  was  a  sleepy  river  town 
characteristic  of  that  day.  William  Dean 
Howells,  in  a  brief  sketch  of  Mark  Twain's 
career,  says:  "Hannibal  as  a  name  is 
hopelessly  confused  and  ineffective;  but 
if  we  know  nothing  of  Mr.  Clemens  from 
Hannibal,  we  can  know  much  of  Han 
nibal  from  Mr.  Clemens,  who,  in  fact, 
has  studied  a  loafing,  out-at  -elbows, 
down-at-the-heels,  slave-holding,  Missis 
sippi  river  town  of  thirty  years  ago,  with 
such  strong  reality  in  his  boy's  romance 
of  'Tom  Sawyer/  that  we  need  inquire 
nothing  further  concerning  the  type. 
The  original  perhaps  no  longer  exists 
anywhere,  certainly  not  in  Hannibal, 
which  has  grown  into  a  flourishing  little 
city.  The  morality  of  the  place  was  the 
morality  of  a  slave-holding  community, 
fierce,  arrogant,  onesided;  the  religion 
Was  Galvanism  in  various  phases,  with 


1 8  Mark  Twain 


its  predestinate  aristocracy  of  saints  and 
its  rabble  of  hopeless  sinners.  Doubt 
less  young  Clemens  escaped  neither  of 
the  opposing  influences  wholly.  His 
people,  like  the  rest,  were  slave-holders; 
but  his  father  like  so  many  other  slave 
holders,  abhorred  slavery — silently,  as 
he  must  in  such  a  time  and  place. " 

Mark  Twain's  childhood  home  was 
that  of  an  ordinary  backwood's  infant. 
His  boyhood  was  a  series  of  mischievous 
adventures.  He  was  sent  to  school  at 
an  early  age,  where  he  says  he  "excelled 
only  in  spelling. "  He  delighted  to  spend 
much  of  his  time  upon  the  river,  and  so 
successfully  was  he  in  getting  into  the 
turbid  waters,  that  he  was  dragged  out 
of  the  river  six  times  before  he  was  twelve 
years  of  age.  His  mother  said  of  him  ; 
"Sam  was  always  a  good-hearted  boy, 
but  he  was  a  very  wild  and  mischievous 
one,  and  do  what  we  could,  we  could 
never  make  him  go  to  school.  This  used 
to  trouble  his  father  and  me  dreadfully, 
and  w$  were  convinced  that  he  would 
never  amount  to  as  much  in  the  world  as 


His  Life  and  Work- 


his  brothers,  because  he  was  not  near  so 
steady  and  sober-minded  as  they  were. 
Often  his  father  would  start  him  off  to 
school,  and  in  a  little  while  would  follow 
him  to  ascertain  his  whereabouts.  There 
was  a  large  stump  on  the  way  to  the 
school-house,  and  Sam  would  take  his 
position  behind  that,  and  as  his  father 
went  past  would  gradually  circle  around 
it  in  such  a  way  as  to  keep  out  of  sight. 
Finally,  his  father  and  the  teacher  both 
said  it  was  of  no  use  to  try  to  teach  Sam 
anything,  because  he  was  determined  not 
to  learn.  But  I  never  gave  up,  He  was 
always  a  great  boy  for  history,  and  could 
never  get  tired  of  that  kind  of  reading; 
but  he  hadn't  any  use  tor  school-houses 
and  text  books." 

A  friend  who  lived  amid  the  scenes  of  his 
boyhood,  writes:  "The  old  home  of  the 
Clemens  family  was  a  two  story  brick,  with 
a  large  tree  in  front.  A  little  way  down 
the  river  is  the  cave  by  which  4Tom 
Sawyer'  made  his  wonderful  escape,  and 
by  means  of  an  underground  passage 
the  city  of  Hannibal  is  easily  regained. 


2O  Mark  Twain 


We  used  to  play  about  the  old  village 
blacksmith  shop,  and  were  always  in 
mischief.  The  old  blacksmith  became 
so  provoked  one  day,  that  he  caught  Sam 
and  with  a  shingle  made  him  so  sore, 
that  he  did  not  sit  down  for  a  week.  As 
soon  as  Sam  recovered  we  went  up  on 
the  hill  immediately  above  the  blacksmith 
shop,  and  every  day  for  about  a  week  we 
worked  at  digging  up  a  big  boulder. 
Finally  we  got  all  the  earth  from  around 
it,  and  all  we  had  to  do  was  to  give  it  a 
shove,  and  down  the  hill  it  would  go  with 
terrible  velocity.  Saturday  afternoon  was 
always  a  holiday  in  Hannibal  in  those 
days.  This  particular  afternoon  was  a 
beautiful  June  day,  and  the  blacksmith 
shop  was  closed.  About  three  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon  we  started  the  boulder  down 
the  hill.  It  struck  the  blacksmith  shop 
and  the  building  was  almost  demolished.*' 

In  a  humorous  sketch  written  in  1870, 
Mark  Twain  tells  the  following  of  his 
father  and  his  boyhood: 

''When  I  say  that  I  never  knew  my 
austere  parent  to  be  enamored  of  but 


His  Life  and  Work.  21 

one  poem  in  all  the  long  half-century 
that  he  lived,  persons  who  knew  him  will 
easily  believe  me;  when  I  say  that  I  have 
never  composed  but  one  poem  in  all  the 
long  third  of  a  century  that  I  have  lived, 
persons  who  know  me  will  be  sincerely 
grateful:  and  finally,  when  I  say  that  the 
poem  which  I  composed  was  not  the  one 
which  my  father  was  enamored  of,  per 
sons  who  may  have  known  us  both  will 
not  need  to  have  this  truth  shot  into 
them  with  a  mountain  howitzer  before 
they  can  receive  it.  My  father  and  I 
were  always  on  the  most  distant  terms 
when  I  was  a  boy — a  sort  of  armed  neu 
trality  ,  so  to  speak .  At  irregular  in  tervals 
this  neutrality  was  broken  and  suffering 
ensued;  but  I  will  be  candid  enough  to 
say  that  the  breaking  and  the  suffering 
were  always  divided  up  with  strict  im 
partiality  between  us — which  is  to  say 
my  father  did  the  breaking,  and  I  did  the 
suffering.  As  a  general  thing  I  was  a 
backward,  cautious  unadventurous  boy. 
But  once  I  jumped  off  a  two-story  stable; 
another  time  I  gave  an  elephant  a  plug 


Mark  Twain 


of  tobacco,  and  retired  without  waiting 
for  aa  answer;  and  still  another  time  I 
pretended  to  be  talking  in  ray  sleep,  and 
got  off  a  portion  of  every  original  conun 
drum  in  heanng  of  my  father.  Let  us 
not  pry  into  the  result;  it  was  of  no  con 
sequence  to  any  one  but  me. 

"But  the  poem  I  have  referred  to  as 
attracting  my  father's  attention,  and 
achieving  his  favor  was  'Hiawatha.' 
Some  man  who  courted  a  sudden  and 
awful  death  presented  him  an  early  copy, 
and  I  never  lost  faith  in  my  own  senses 
until  I  saw  him  sit  down  and  go  to  read 
ing  it  in  cold  blood — saw  him  open  the 
book,  and  heard  him  read  these  following 
lines,  with  the  same  inflectionless  judicial 
frigidity  with  which  he  always  read  his 
charge  to  the  jury,  or  administered  an 
oath  to  a  witness — 

"Take  your  bow,  O  Hiawatha, 
Take  your  arrows,  jasper-headed, 
Take  your  war-club,  Puggawaugun, 
And  your  mittens,  Minjekahwan, 
And  your  birch  canoe  for  sailing, 
And  the  oil  of  Mishe-Nama."  ' 


Hts  Life  and  Work.  23 


From  all  accounts  Mark  was  an  incor 
rigible  boy,  filled  with  roving  imaginations 
from  his  very  earliest  age.  Many  of  the 
scenes  in  his  books  are  taken  from  the 
real  occurrences  of  his  boyhood.  The 
steamboat  scene  in  "The  Gilded  Age" 
was  witnessed  by  him  while  out  on  his 
aimless  wanderings.  His  adventure  with 
a  dead  man  in  his  father's  office  was  also 
literally  true.  He  had  played  " hookey'* 
from  school  all  day  and  far  into  the  night 
was  absent,  and  rather  than  go  home  and 
be  greeted  with  a  flogging,  raised  the 
window  and  climbed  into  the  office  with 
the  intention  of  resting  all  night  upon  a 
lounge.  His  description  of  the  horror 
creeping  over  him  as  he  saw  a  ghastly 
hand  lying  in  the  moonlight;  how  he 
shut  his  eyes  and  tried  to  count,  and 
opened  them  in  time  to  see  the  dead  man 
lying  on  the  floor,  stiff  and  stark,  with  a 
ghastly  wound  in  his  side,  and  at  last, 
how  he  beat  a  terrified  retreat  through 
the  window,  carrying  the  sash  with  him 
for  '  'convenience"  is  vividly  remembered 
by  every  reader  of  his  works.  Mrs. 


24  Mark  Twain 


Clemens  asserts  that  the  whole  affair 
transpired  as  Mark  recorded  it — the  man 
was  killed  in  a  street  fight  almost  in  front  * 
of  the  office  door,  and  was  taken  in  there 
while  &  post  mortem  examination  was  held, 
and  there  left  until  next  morning.  Dur 
ing  the  night  Mark  came  in,  and  the 
scene  he  has  so  ludicrously  but  graphically 
depicted  was  enacted. 

His  books  abound  in  stories  of  his 
boyhood.  "Tom  Sawyer"  tells  of  his 
youthful  adventures,  although  his  coun 
terpart  is  more  correctly  depicted  in 
"Huckleberry  Finn".  In  his  "Old  Times 
on  the  Mississippi"  he  says:  "When  I  was 
a  boy,  there  was  but  one  permanent  am 
bition  among  my  comrades  in  our  village 
on  the  west  bank  of  the  Mississippi 
river.  That  was  to  be  a  steamboatman. 
We  had  transient  ambitions  of  other 
sorts,  but  they  were  only  transient. 
When  a  circus  came  and  went  it  left  us 
all  burning  to  become  clowns;  the  first 
negro  minstrel  show  that  came  to  our 
section  left  us  all  suffering  to  try  that 
kind  of  life;  now  and  then  we  had  a  hope 


His  Life  and  Work. 


that  if  we  lived  and  were  good,  God 
would  permit  us  to  become  pirates. 
These  ambitions  faded  out,  each  in  its 
turn,  but  the  ambition  to  be  a  steamboat- 
man  always  remained." 

When  the  father  died,  the  mother  was 
left  with  four  children,  Sam  being  twelve 
years  of  age.  The  sons  realized  that 
they  must  do  their  part  in  the  struggle 
for  the  support  of  the  family.  In  those 
early  years  he  tried  various  methods  of 
earning  a  livelihood,  and  finally  entered 
the  office  of  the  Hannibal  Weekly  Courier, 
as  a  printer's  apprentice.  At  a  printers' 
banquet  in  New  York,  some  years  ago, 
he  told  the  story  of  his  apprenticeship,  in 
which  he  said:  "It  may  be  that  the 
printer  of  to-day  is  not  the  printer  of 
thirty-five  years  ago.  I  was  no  stranger 
to  him.  I  knew  him  well.  I  built  the 
fire  for  him  in  the  winter  mornings;  I 
brought  his  water  from  the  village  pump; 
I  swept  out  his  office;  I  picked  up  his 
type  from  under  his  stand;  and,  if  he  was 
there  to  see,  I  put  the  good  type  in  his 
case  and  the  broken  ones  among  the 


26  Mark  Twain 


'hell  matter;'  and  if  he  wasn't  there  to  see, 
I  dumped  it  all  with  the  'pi'  on  the  im 
posing  stone — for  that  was  the  furtive 
fashion  of  the  cub,  and  I  was  the  cub. 
I  wetted  down  the  paper  Saturdays,  I 
turned  it  Sundays — for  this  was  a  country 
weekly;  I  rolled,  I  washed  the  rollers, 
I  washed  the  forms,  I  folded  the  papers, 
I  carried  them  around  in  the  disagree 
able  dawn  Thursday  mornings.  The 
carrier  was  then  an  object  of  interest  to 
all  the  dogs  in  town.  If  I  had  saved  up 
all  the  bites  I  ever  received,  I  could  keep 
M.  Pasteur  busy  for  a  year.  I  enveloped 
the  papers  that  were  for  the  mail — we 
had  100  town  subscribers  and  350  country 
ones;  the  town  subscribers  paid  in  gro 
ceries  and  the  country  ones  in  cabbage 
and  cord  wood — when  they  paid  at  all, 
which  was  merely  sometimes,  and  then 
we  always  stated  the  fact  in  the  paper, 
and  gave  them  a  puff;  and  if  we  forgot 
to  they  stopped  the  paper.  Every  man 
in  the  town  list  helped  to  edit  the  thing; 
that  is,  he  gave  orders  as  to  how  it  was 
to  be  edited;  dictated  its  opinions,  marked 


His  Life  and  Work. 


out  its  course  for  it,  and  every  time  the 
boss  failed  to  connect,  he  stopped  his 
paper. 

"Life  was  easy  with  us;  if  we  pied  a 
form  we  suspended  till  next  week,  and 
we  always  suspended  every  now  and  then 
when  the  fishing  was  good,  and  explained 
it  by  the  illness  of  the  editor,  a  paltry 
excuse,  because  that  kind  of  a  paper  was 
just  as  well  off  with  a  sick  editor  as  a 
well  one,  and  better  off  with  a  dead  one 
than  with  either  of  them. 

"I  can  see  that  printing  office  of  pre 
historic  times  yet,  with  its  horse  bills  on 
the  walls,  its  *d'  boxes  clogged  with 
tallow,  because  we  always  stood  the 
candle  in  the  *k*  box  nights,  its  towel, 
which  was  not  considered  soiled  until  it 
could  stand  alone,  and  other  signs  and 
symbols  that  marked  the  establishment 
of  that  kind  in  Mississippi  valley." 

For  three  years  he  worked  faithfully  in 
the  office  of  the  Courier  ',  and  at  the  age 
of  fifteen  considered  himself  a  full-fledged 
journeyman  printer.  He  had  been  earn 
ing  fifty  cents  a  week,  and  had  saved  his 


28  Mark  Twain 


money.  One  evening  upon  coming  home 
he  asked  his  mother  for  five  dollars.  On 
being  questioned  as  to  what  he  wanted 
with  it,  he  said  he  wanted  it  to  start  out 
traveling  with.  He  failed  to  obtain  the 
five  dollars,  but  he  assured  his  mother 
that  he  would  go  all  the  same,  and  he 
really  went,  nor  did  the  old  lady  ever 
set  eyes  on  him  again  until  he  had  be 
come  a  man.  He  had  made  up  his  mind 
to  run  away  and  see  the  exposition  in 
New  York.  He  worked  his  way  east 
ward  as  a  tramp  printer,  stopping  for 
several  weeks  in  Sandusky  and  other 
towns  in  Ohio. 

Arriving  in  New  York  his  worldly 
possessions  amounted  to  twelve  dollars, 
a  ten  dollar  bill  of  which  sum  he  had 
sewed  into  his  coat  sleeve.  After  he 
had  visited  and  carefully  examined  the 
long  coveted  exposition,  he  found  em 
ployment  in  the  printing  office  of  John 
N.  Green.  Some  two  or  three  months 
after  this  the  boy  met  a  man  from  his 
own  town  of  Hannibal,  and  fearing  that 
his  whereabouts  would  be  reported,  he 


His  Life  and  Work.  29 

suddenly  took  his  departure  for  Philadel 
phia.  He  secured  work  in  the  office  of 
the  Ledger  and  other  newspapers,  and 
remained  in  the  Quaker  city  for  several 
months.  While  here,  as  a  result  of 
taking  the  part  of  a  poor  boy  who  was 
imposed  upon  by  a  fireman,  he  was 
severely  beaten  by  the  latter,  so  that  "he 
resembled  Lisbon  after  the  earthquake, " 
to  quote  his  own  language.  One  day  he 
made  up  his  mind  that  he  had  seen 
enough  of  the  world  in  the  Eastern  States, 
and,  with  his  ten  dollars  still  sewed  in 
his  coat  sleeve,  he  started  westward, 
having  in  view  his  Missouri  home.  He 
tarried  awhile  in  Cincinnati,  Louisville 
and  other  river  towns,  and  finally  arrived 
in  St.  Louis.  He  was  at  this  time  seven 
teen  years  of  age,  and  his  longings  and 
ambitions  for  river  life  returned.  '  'I  first 
wanted  to  be  a  cabin  boy,"  he  says,  "and 
then  a  deck  hand  who  stood  on  the  end 
of  the  stage  plank  with  a  coil  of  rope  in 
his  hand,  because  he  was  particularly 
conspicuous.  But  these  were  only  day 
dreams — they  were  too  heavenly  to  be 


jo  Mark  Twain 


contemplated  as  real  possibilities.  *  * 
I  said  I  never  would  come  home  again 
till  I  was  a  pilot  and  could  come  in  glory. 
But  somehow  I  could  not  manage  it.  I 
went  meekly  aboard  a  few  boats  that  lay 
packed  together  like  sardines  at  the  long 
St.  Louis  wharf,  and  very  humbly  in 
quired  for  the  pilots,  but  got  only  a  cold 
shoulder  and  short  words  from  mates  and 
clerks.  But  I  was  ashamed  to  go  home. 
*  *  *  I  was  in  Cincinnati  and  I  set  to 
work  to  map  out  a  new  career.  I  had 
been  reading  about  the  recent  explora 
tions  of  the  River  Amazon  by  an  expedi 
tion  sent  out  by  our  government.  It 
was  said  that  the  expedition,  owing  to 
difficulties,  had  not  thoroughly  explored 
a  part  of  the  country  lying  about  the 
head-waters,  some  four  thousand  miles 
from  the  mouth  of  the  river.  It  was 
only  about  fifteen  hundred  miles  from 
Cincinnati  to  New  Orleans  where  I 
could  doubtless  get  a  ship.  I  had  thirty 
dollars  left.  I  would  go  on  and  complete 
the  exploration  of  the  Amazon.  I  packed 
my  valise,  and  took  passage  on  an  ancient 


His  Life  and  Work.  31 

tub,  called  the  Paul  Jones,  for  New 
Orleans.  For  the  sum  of  sixteen  dollars 
I  had  the  scarred  and  tarnished  splendors 
of  'her'  main  saloon  principally  to  my 
self,  for  she  was  not  a  creature  to  attract 
the  eye  of  wiser  travelers.  When  we 
presently  got  under  way,  and  went  pok 
ing  down  the  broad  Ohio,  I  became  a 
new  being,  and  the  subject  of  my  own 
admiration,  I  was  a  traveler.  A  word 
had  never  tasted  so  good  in  my  mouth 
before.  *  *  I  kept  my  hat  off  all  the 
time,  and  stayed  where  the  wind  and  the 
sun  could  strike  me,  because  I  wanted  to 
get  a  bronzed  and  weather-beaten  look  of 
an  old  traveler.  Before  the  second  day 
was  half  gone,  I  experienced  a  joy  which 
filled  me  with  the  purest  gratitude;  for  I 
saw  that  the  skin  had  begun  to  blister 
and  peel  off  my  neck  and  face.  I  wished 
that  the  boys  and  girls  at  home  could  see 
me  now. 

4 ''After  two  weeks  the  Paul  Jones 
reached  New  Orleans,  and  the  young 
traveler  discovered  two  things.  One  was 
that  a  vessel  would  not  be  likely  to  sail 


32  Mark  Twain 


for  the  mouth  of  the  Amazon  under  ten 
or  twelve  years;  and  the  other  was  that 
the  nine  or  ten   dollars   still  left  in  my 
pocket  would  not  suffice  for  so  imposing 
an  exploration  as  I  had  planned,  even  if 
I  could  afford  to  wait  for  a  ship.     There 
fore  it  followed   that  I  must  contrive  a 
new  career.     The   Paul  Jones  was  now 
bound  for  St.  Louis.     I  planned  a  siege 
against  my  pilot,  and  at  the  end  of  three 
hard  days  he  surrendered.     He  agreed  to 
teach    me     the   Mississippi     from   New 
Orleans  to  St.  lyouis  for  five  hundred 
dollars,  payable  out  of  the  first  wages  I 
should     receive     after     graduating.      I 
entered    upon    the  small    enterprise    of 
'learning*    twelve  or    thirteen    hundred 
miles  of  the  great  Mississippi  river  with 
the  easy   confidence  of  my   time  of  life. 
If  I  had  really  known  what  I  was  about 
to  require  of  my  faculties,  I  should  not 
have  had  the  courage  to  begin.'" 

"The  work  proved  hard  and  discourag 
ing  for  the  youth,  but  he  finally  reached 
the  desired  position  of  pilot;  and  had  ttve 
proud  satisfaction  of  receiving  two  bun- 


His  Life  and  Work. 


clred  and  fifty  dollars  per  month.  Here 
he  remained  for  five  years,  till  he  was 
twenty-six,  when  the  growth  of  railroads 
and  the  Civil  War  made  piloting  un 
profitable.  " 

An  old  steamboatman,  Captain  H.  E. 
Bixby,  furnishes  the  following  interesting 
reminiscences  of  Mark  Twain's  experi 
ence  of  a  pilot:  "In  1852  I  was  chief 
pilot  on  the  Paul  Jones,  a  boat  that  made 
occasional  trips  from  Pittsburg  to  New 
Orleans.  One  day  a  tall,  angular, 
hoosier-like  young  fellow,  whose  limbs 
appeared  to  be  fastened  with  leather 
hinges,  entered  the  pilot  house,  and  in  a 
peculiar,  drawling  voice  said: 

"  'Good  mawnin,  sir.  Don't  you  want 
to  take  er  piert  young  fellow  and  teach 
'iin  how  to  be  er  pilot?  ' 

"  'No  sir;  there  is  more  bother  about  it 
than  it's  worth/ 

"  'I  wish  you  would,  mister.  I'm  er 
printer  by  trade,  but  it  don't  'pear  to 
'gree  with  me,  and  I'm  on  my  way  to 
Central  America  for  my  health.  I  believe 


34  Mark  Twain 


I'll  make  a  tolerable  good  pilot,  'cause  I 
like  the  river/ 

'  'What  makes  you  pull  your  words 
that  way?' 

"  'I  don't  know,  mister;  you'll  have  to 
ask  my  ma.     She  pulls  hern  too.     Ain't 
there  some   way  that   we  can  fix  it,  so 
that  you'll  teach  me  how  to  be  er  pilot?' 
"  'The  only  way  is  for  money.' 
"  'How  much  are  you  going  to  charge?' 
"  'Well,    I'll   teach   you   the  river   for 
$500. 

"  'Gee  whillikens!  he!  he!  I  ain't  got 
$500,  but  I've  got  five  lots  in  Keokuk, 
Iowa,  and  2,000  acres  of  land  in  Ten 
nessee  that  is  worth  two  bits  an  acre  any 
time.  You  can  have  that  if  you  want  it.' 
"I  toll  him  I  did  not  care  for  his  land, 
and  after  talking  awhile  he  agreed  to  pay 
$100  in  cash,  $150  in  twelve  months  and 
the  balance  when  he  became  a  pilot. 
He  was  with  me  for  a  long  time,  but 
sometimes  took  occasional  trips  with 
other  pilots.  He  was  always  drawling 
out  dry  jokes,  but  then  we  did  not  pay 
any  attention  to  him." 


His  Life  and  Work. 


Upon  the  western  rivers  the  occurrence 
of  sand  bars,  together  with  snags  and 
other  obstructions,  require  constant 
watchfulness  on  the  part  of  those  who  run 
the  boats,  and  frequent  soundings  in 
shallow  places.  Upon  approaching  a 
sand  bar  or  shallow,  the  captain  takes 
his  stand  upon  the  edge  of  the  hurricane 
deck,  in  front  of  the  pilot  house,  while 
one  of  the  crew  stands  at  the  bow  to  cast 
the  lead  and  give  the  soundings  to  the 
captain,  who  repeats  them  to  the  pilot. 
When  the  line  man  draws  up  the  lead 
and  finds  the  water  down  two  feet,  he 
sings  out  "by  the  mark  twain,"  or-as  is 
more  frequently  the  case,  simply  '  'mark 
twain."  The  captain  repeats  to  the 
pilot,  and  it  becomes  the  latter  to  mind 
his  helm;  but  as  the  length  of  the  line 
below  the  water  increases,  he  gives  out 
the  soundings  in  a  constantly  increasing 
joyous  tone,  singing  out,  "three  feet"  or 
"four  feet"  in  a  sing-song  cadence,  until 
all  danger  is  passed  and  the  line  is  laid 
away.  This  specimen  of  Mississippi 
river  vernacular  "  Mark  Twain"  was  in 


36  Mark  Twain 


his  later   years   adopted   by   Samuel  L. 
Clemens  as  a  nom  de  plume. 


Bis  Life  and  Work. 


III. 

IN  NEVADA  AND  CALIPOENIA. 


At  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War, 
Mark  Twain  was  a  regularly  employed 
pilot  on  the  river  steamboat  Alonzo 
Childs.  He  remained  at  the  wheel  until 
the  craft  was  converted  into  a  Confederate 
ram,  the  opening  of  the  war  having  put 
an  end  to  profitable  piloting. 

Young  Clemens  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
four  years,  returned  to  Hannibal,  and 
enlisted  as  a  three  months'  volunteer  in 
the  Confederate  army  under  General 
Price. 

In  a  magazine  article  printed  some 
years  since  he  related  his  experiences  as 
a  soldier,  in  a  paper  entitled  "The  Pri- 


38  Mark  Twain 


vate  History  of  a  Campaign  that  Failed." 
The  following  is  his  account  of  the  or 
ganization  of  the  company : 

"I  was  visiting  in  the  small  town 
where  my  boyhood  had  been  spent — 
Hannibal,  Marion  County.  Several  of 
us  got  together  in  a  secret  place  by  night 
and  formed  ourselves  into  a  military 
company.  One  Tom  Lyman,  a  young 
fellow  of  a  good  deal  of  spirit  but  of  no 
military  experience,  was  made  captain; 
I  was  made  second  lieutenant.  We  had 
no  first  lieutenant;  I  do  not  know  why; 
it  was  long  ago.  There  were  fifteen  of 
us.  By  the  advice  of  an  innocent  con 
nected  with  the  organization,  we  called 
ourselves  the  Marion  Rangers.  I  do  not 
remember  that  any  one  found  fault  with 
the  name.  I  did  not ;  I  thought  it  sounded 
quite  well.  The  young  fellow  who  pro 
posed  this  title  was  perhaps  a  fair  sample 
of  the  kind  of  stuff  we  were  made  of. 
He  was  young,  ignorant,  good-natured, 
well-meaning,  trivial,  full  of  romance, 
and  given  to  reading  chivalric  novels  and 
singing  forlorn  love-ditties.  He  had 


His  Life  and  Work. 


some  pathetic  little  nickel-plated  aristo 
cratic  instincts,  and  detested  his  name, 
which  was  Dunlap;  detested  it,  partly 
because  it  was  nearly  as  common  in  that 
region  as  Smith,  but  mainly  because  it 
had  a  plebeian  sound  to  his  ear.  So  he 
tried  to  ennoble  it  by  writing  it  in  this 
way:  d*  Unlap.  That  contented  his  eye, 
but  left  his  ear  unsatisfied,  for  people 
gave  the  new  name  the  same  old  pro 
nunciation — emphasis  on  the  front  end  of 
it.  He  proved  useful  to  us  in  his  way; 
he  named  our  camps  for  us,  and  he  gen 
erally  struck  a  name  that  was  'no  slouch/ 
as  the  boys  said.'' 

Having  been  a  pilot,  and  therefore 
knowing  the  channel  and  being  familiar 
with  the  points  where  steamboats  would 
have  to  hug  the  shore,  Lieutenant 
Clemens  was  detailed  to  special  duty  on 
the  river.  He  was  captured  and  paroled. 
Being  captured  a  second  time,  he  was 
sent  to  St.  I,ouis,  and  imprisoned  in  a 
tobacco  warehouse.  He  got  to  thinking 
the  matter  over — the  possibility  of  being 
sent  to  Grant's  army,  by  which  he  was 


4O  Mark  Twain 


first  captured,  to  be  exchanged,  and  by 
which,  if  recognized,  he  would  certainly 
be  shot  for  a  violation  of  his  parole.  He 
finally  succeeded  in  making  his  escape 
and  started  westward. 

President  Lincoln  had  appointed 
James  W.  Nye  as  Governor  of  Nevada, 
and  Orion  Clemens,  an  older  brother  of 
Samuel,  was  selected  as  Territorial  Sec 
retary  by  the  President.  Sam  joined  his 
brother  at  Carson  City  in  the  capacity  of 
private  secretary,  but  fearing  that  the 
influence  of  his  brother  would  not  be 
sufficient  to  save  him  if  he  should  be 
recognized  by  passing  officers  or  soldiers 
of  the  Union  army,  he  did  not  remain 
long  in  Carson,  but  pushed  on  to  an  out 
of  the  way  mining  camp,  called  Aurora, 
where  he  remained  until  he  fancied  the 
storm  had  blown  over.  While  in  Aurora 
he  wrote  a  series  of  letters  to  the  Vir 
ginia  City  Enterprise,  which  subsequently 
resulted  in  his  obtaining  an  editorial 
position  upon  that  journal. 

Nevada,  at  that  time,  was  swarming 
with  adventurers.  Bankrupt  tradesmen 


His  Life  and  Work. 


were  flocking  there  from  other  territories. 
College  graduates,  tired  of  grubbing  for 
Greek  roots,  went  there  to  grub  for  gold 
and  silver.  Murderers  and  thieves,  es 
caped  from  justice,  gamblers  and  the 
outcasts  from  the  cities  joined  the  throng 
and  society  became  very  lively  in  the 
mining  towns  of  the  territory.  The 
fashionable  ornaments  of  the  day  con 
sisted  of  an  eight  inch  revolver,  an 
Arkansas  toothpick  and  jack  boots. 

In  the  mining  regions  Mark  Twain 
passed  through  divers  experiences.  He 
worked  at  day's  wages  in  a  quartz  mill, 
and  was  explorer  and  prospector.  Many  of 
his  sketches,  afterward  incorporated,  in 
"The  Jumping  Krog"  and  "Roughing  It," 
were  published  at  that  time  in  local  or 
Eastern  journals.  Once  for  the  space  of 
a  few  moments,  he  owned  the  famous 
Comstock  lode,  and  was  worth  millions. 
He  found  out  all  this  after  he  had  sold 
the  claim. 

During  the  winter  of  1861-2  he  returned 
to  Carson  City  for  a  time.  There  was 
little  doing  at  the  territorial  capital,  and 


Mark  Twain 


in  the  rear  of  Governor  Nye's  private 
office  was  a  comfortable  room,  where 
Clemens  and  the  other  attaches  of  the 
offices  wiled  away  the  winter  days  at 
cards  and  story  telling. 

In  the  spring  of  1862  he  accepted  the 
local  editorship  of  the  Virginia  City 
Enterprise,  and  upon  that  paper  utilized 
for  the  first  time  his  pseudonym  of  4  'Mark 
Twain."  He  perpetrated  many  broad 
and  practical  jokes  through  his  paper. 
His  sharp  pen  caused  a  man  named 
Willis,  then  city  editor  of  the  Virginia 
Union  to  hunting  up  his  record.  This 
resulted  in  Clemens  sending  Willis  a 
challenge  to  mortal  combat.  Willis 
would  not  accept,  for  he  said  he  would 
not  meet  any  one  on  the  field  of  honor 
except  a  man  of  honor.  His  best  man 
then  challenged  Clemens,  but  he  too 
declined  on  the  same  ground  given  by 
Willis.  At  that  time  dueling  had  just 
been  made  popular  by  a  meeting  between 
Tom  Fitch,  the  silver-tongued  orator, 
and  Joseph  T.  Goodman,  editor  of  the 
Enterprise.  But  the  matter  was  dropped, 


His  Life  and  Work.  43 

and  Mark  Twain  and  Willis  never  met 
upon  the  field  of  honor. 

"About  the  year  1863,"  says  Robert 
Fulford,  "I  was  a  printer  on  the  Virginia 
City  Enterprise,  and  Mark  was  on  the 
local  staff.  Mark  and  I  roomed  together 
across  the  'divide'  in  a  place  known  as 
Gold  Hill,  about  a  mile  from  Virginia 
City.  He  was  a  droll,  dry  sort  of  a 
fellow,  delighted  in  practical  jokes,  and 
the  boys  had  to  be  constantly  on  the  alert 
for  fear  of  some  new  scheme  he  would 
spring  upon  them." 

A  club  of  good  fellows  was  organized 
in  Virginia  City  by  Mark  Twain,  Dan 
De  Quille,  Frank  May,  Louis  Aldrich 
and  others,  under  the  name  of  the  "  Vis 
igoths,"  and  they  carried  their  practical 
jokes  to  such  an  extent  that  they  gained 
a  somewhat  unfavorable  reputation. 

While  in  Virginia  City,  some  miners 
came  down  from  Calaveras,  and  told 
Mark  Twain  about  the  miners  there 
loading  a  frog  up  with  shot.  And  it  was 
a  fact.  In  those  days  the  men  in  the 
camps  would  bet  about  anything,  and 


44  Mark  Twain 


one  day  they  got  to  betting  about  how  far 
some  frogs  could  jump.  They  conceived 
the  idea  of  filling  one  of  the  rival  frogs 
with  shot,  and  did  it,  and  the  frog  couldn't 
jump.  Mark  wrote  out  the  story  for  the 
Enterprise,  and  in  this  way  "The  Jump 
ing  Frog  of  Calaveras"  first  saw  the  light 
oi  day. 

Many  interesting  anecdotes  are  told  of 
the  humorist's  life  in  Virginia  City,  and 
he  tells  one  himself  of  how  the  funniest 
thing  he  ever  wrote  came  to  an  untimely 
end  and  was  lost  to  the  world  through 
the  interferance  of  an  "editorial"  com 
positor.  In  Nevada,  at  that  time,  it  was 
the  custom  of  the  proprietor  of  every  new 
saloon,  to  send  a  basket  of  his  choicest 
wines  to  the  newspaper  office,  and  for 
the  editor  to  return  the  compliment  by 
giving  a  glowing  account  of  the  brilliancy 
of  the  affair.  A  basket  of  unusually 
choice  wine  had  been  sent  to  the  office 
one  day,  from  a  saloon  of  a  very  aristo 
cratic  order  that  was  to  be  opened. 
Mark  was  to  "write  up"  the  opening. 
He  wrote  a  few  lines  in  the  best  of 


His  Life  and  Work.  45 

English  and  then  it  began  to  be  badly 
mixed,  and  as  he  represented  bottle  after 
bottle  as  having  been  sampled,  approved 
and  emptied,  he  drifted  into  worse  and 
worse  confusion,  until  finally  the  article 
was  all  tangled  up,  as  might  be  supposed 
of  a  man  who  had  drank  a  basket  of 
mixed  wines.  When  the  paper  came 
out  Mark  could  not  find  his  cherished 
article,  but  instead  found  a  short  para 
graph  setting  forth  in  the  most  common 
place  way,  that  a  basket  of  wines  had 

been   received   from   Mr. ,  and   that 

they  were  very  fine,  etc.  Mark  was 
mad  and  found  that  one  of  the  printers 
was  responsible.  The  fellow  said  he 
could  not  make  head  or  tail  of  the  copy, 
and  thought  Mr.  Clemens  must  have 
been  drunk  when  he  wrote  it,  so  he  tore 
it  up  and  substituted  the  paragraph. 
The  humorist  mourned  long  for  the  loss 
of  the  article  which  he  could  not  re 
produce,  and  to  this  day  believes  that  it 
was  the  most  brilliant  of  any  of  his  pro 
ductions,  even  before  or  since. 

During  this  period  in  his  career >  Mark 


46  Mark  Twain 


gave  to  the  world  many  of  the  short 
humorous  sketches  that  made  him  famous. 
He  had  already  acquired  a  name  on  the 
Pacific  Coast,  and  his  newspaper  articles 
were  beginning  to  attract  attention  east 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Among  these 
sketches  were  "The  Undertaker's  Chat," 
"The  Petrified  Man,"  and  "The  Mar 
velous  'Bloody  Massacre.'"  Some  of  the 
quaintest  and  brightest  things  which 
have  appeared  under  his  name  originally 
enlivened  the  pages  of  the  Enterprise 
with  its  crimson  catalogue  of  murders, 
duels  and  Judge  lyynch  executions. 

In  1863  the  Gould  and  Curry  mine  on 
the  Comstock  paid  dividends  amounting 
to  $100  to  $150  a  share.  Whenever  a 
dividend  was  declared,  the  San  Francisco 
Bulletin,  after  announcing  the  fact,  would 
add:  "Wonder  if  this  dividend  was 
cooked?"  A  certain  San  Francisco 
capitalist,  being  in  Virginia  City  one  day 
after  one  of  these  monthly  queries,  told 
the  cause  of  them.  It  is  a  fact  that  one 
mining  company  had  hired  money  and 
declared  a  dividend.  This  was  the  Dana 


His  Life  and  Work. 


mine,  which  never  had  a  foot  of  ore,  but 
the  dividend  raised  the  price  of  the  stock 
to  a  respectable  figure,  at  which  the 
owners  thereof  disposed  of  their  stock. 
This  San  Francisco  capitalist  stated  that 
this  swindle  had  caught  the  proprietors 
of  that  journal  somewhat  heavily.  "But," 
he  added,  "if  the  Bulletin  wants  to  find 
a  company  nearer  home  which  is  borrow 
ing  money  to  pay  dividends,  I  can  give 
you  an  instance  in  point.  The  Spring 
Valley  Water  Company  has  hired  money 
to  pay  its  two  last  dividends,  and  all  the 
big  fish  are  getting  out  and  letting  the 
little  fish  in.  Perhaps  that  might  attract 
that  journal's  indignation  also." 

Twain  and  another  writer  employed  on 
the  Enterprise  counseled  together  on  the 
improbability  of  a  plain  notice  of  the  fact 
of  the  Spring  Valley  Water  Company's 
hiring  money  to  pay  dividends  —  made,  as 
it  must  be,  in  a  country  journal  —  would 
attract  any  notice  whatever  in  the  metro 
politan  press.  Accordingly,  in  order  to 
overcome  the  difficulty  surrounding  the 
"country"  location,  the  matter  was  held 


48  Mark  Twain 


under  advisement  for  one  day,  much  to 
the  disgust  of  the  San  Francisco  capitalist. 

On  the  second  day  Mark  announced 
that  he  had  surmounted  the  *  'country" 
difficulty,  and,  sure  enough,  he  had. 
Accordingly,  in  the  local  columns  of  the 
Enterprise  the  next  morning  appeared  an 
account  of  a  terrible  tragedy  that  had 
been  committed  in  "the  great  pine  forest 
between  Empire  City  and  Dutch  Nick's" 
the  day  before.  The  story  went  on  to 
state  that  a  man  named  Hopkins,  who 
resided  there,  and  who  had  owned  mil 
lions  in  the  Comstock,  had  been  induced 
to  sell  out  his  entire  mining  interests  by 
a  relative  of  his,  who  was  one  of  the  editors 
of  the  Bulletin.  By  the  same  advise  he  had 
invested  every  dollar  in  the  Spring  Valley 
Water  Company,  and,  on  learning  that 
its  two  last  dividends  had  been  paid  with 
borrowed  money,  he  became  so  violently 
nsane,  that  he  murdered  his  wife  and 
thirteen  children,  under  the  impression 
that  they  would  come  to  immediate  want. 

The  next  day  Mark  published  a  card 
in  which  he  took  it  all  back  except  the 


His  Life  and  Work.  49 

way  the  money  had  been  procured  to  pay 
the  dividends,  and  adding  that  '  'it  took  a 
fearful  tragedy  to  get  any  truth  into  a 
San  Francisco  newspaper  anyhow." 

J.  H.  Stebbins,  an  old  time  printer, 
relates  the  following  incident  of  Twain's 
life  in  Virginia  City:  "Clemens  was 
local  reporter  on  The  Enterprise,  and  I 
was  a  printer  on  the  same  paper. 
Clemens  was  writing  humorous  sketches, 
but  his  fame  as  a  humorist  was  young 
yet.  He  was  an  inveterate  smoker,  and 
smoked  the  foulest-smelling  pipe  in  Vir 
ginia  City  by  au  odds.  Clemens'  office 
was  just  off  the  composing-room,  and 
although  printers,  as  a  rule,  are  not 
squeamish  about  pipes  and  things,  this 
pipe  was  breeding  a  revolution.  It 
smelled  so  infernally  bad  that  we  always 
spoke  of  it  as  'The  Remains.'  There 
were  numerous  plots  suggested  to  get 
The  Remains'  out  of  the  way,  but  we 
hesitated  about  putting  them  into  execu 
tion  when  we  learned  that  it  was  a  pipe 
of  considerable  value,  and  one  that  he 
cherished  on  account  of  its  associations  or 


Mark  Twain 


something.  It  was  clear,  however,  that 
something  had  to  be  done,  and  we  finally 
concluded  to  present  Clemens  with  a  new 
pipe.  \Ve  had  suffered  so  much  from  the 
old  pipe  of  a  thousand  smells  that  we 
felt  justified  in  making  him  the  victim  of 
a  joke,  if  we  could,  and  so  we  scoured 
the  town  and  bought  the  cheapest  pipe 
we  could  find  that  would  pass  after  night 
for  a  good  one.  I  think  it  cost  thirty 
cents.  One  night,  after  we  had  the 
paper  up,  we  all  filed  solemnly  out  into 
the  local -room  and  presented  Clemens 
with  the  pipe.  We  threw  as  much  cere 
mony  into  the  presentation  as  possible. 
One  of  the  boys  made  an  address  that 
was  really  affecting.  He  talked  about 
the  toilers  in  the  profession  of  journalism, 
their  long  nights  of  labor  when  all  the 
rest  of  the  world  was  wrapped  in  peace 
ful  slumber.  Then  he  worked  in  some 
of  the  poetry  about  tobacco  and  the  solace 
it  afforded  the  tired  brain.  He  spoke  of 
the  warm  friendship  that  existed  between 
the  local  department  and  the  composing- 
room,  and  hoped  nothing  would  ever 


His  Life  and  Work. 


occur  to  sever  these  silken  ties.  Then 
he  handed  him  the  twenty  -five-cent  frand, 
wiped  his  fingers  through  his  eyes  and 
sat  down. 

1  'Clemens  was  knocked  completely  out 
for  a  time,  but  he  pulled  himself  together 
and  returned  his  thanks  in  a  very  feeling 
manner.  He  said  the  pretty  gift  from 
his  co-workers  on  the  paper  touched  him 
deeply,  and  he  would  retain  it  long  as  a 
souvenir  of  pleasant  days.  The  old  pipe 
had  long  been  a  friend  and  companion. 
It  had  been  a  comforter  in  lonely  hours; 
but  this  handsome  gift  from  friends  he 
loved  made  the  parting  easy,  and  as  a 
climax  to  his  remarks  he  threw  the  ill- 
smelling  old-timer  out  of  the  window. 
We  accepted  his  invitation  to  go  down 
stairs  with  him,  and  knowing  the  mis 
erable  swindle  we  had  perpetrated,  every 
dollar  he  spent  gave  us  a  pang. 

4  'The  very  next  night,  while  Clemens 
was  smoking  his  new  pipe,  the  bowl  of 
the  cussed  thing  split  open  from  stem  to 
stern.  We  heard  him  growling  to  him 
self,  and  looking  out  of  a  hole  in  the  wall 


Mark  Twain 


through  which  he  shoved  copy,  we  saw 
him  brushing  the  ashes  off  his  desk  and 
clothes  and  swearing  softly  in  a  very 
picturesque  manner.  He  didn't  say  a 
word  to  us  about  the  pipe  or  its  fate,  and 
you  bet  we  said  nothing  to  him.  It  was 
evident,  however,  that  he  had  done  some 
thinking,  for  he  appeared  at  the  office 
next  night  complacently  smoking  'The 
Remains/  He  had  gone  down  into  the 
back  yard  and  hunted  it  up." 

From  Virginia  City,  Mark  Twain 
drifted  as  a  matter  of  course  to  San 
Francisco — the  harbor  of  all  adventurers 
on  the  coast.  He  was  in  a  chronic  state 
of  impecuniosity  when  he  arrived  at  the 
Golden  Gate.  He  had  furnished  some 
correspondence  to  the  Morning  Call  from 
Nevada,  and  to  the  office  of  that  news 
paper  he  immediately  betook  himself. 
He  wanted  work  and  money.  He  wore 
a  ragged  felt  hat,  a  soldier's  blue  over 
coat,  and  pantaloons  which  had  formed  a 
passing  acquaintance  with  the  tops  of  his 
boots.  George  Barnes,  who  was  at  that 
time  editor  of  the  Call,  told  him  to  go 


His  Life  and  Work 


to  work  the  next  day,  and  gave  him  an 
order  on  the  business  office  for  money 
enough  to  make  himself  look  respectable. 
The  next  day  Twain  took  possession  of 
his  chair,  and  for  six  weary  months 
Barnes  tried  to  get  some  work  cut  of 
him. 

At  the  end  of  that  time,  in  his  good- 
natured  way,  he  tried  to  let  Mark  down 
and  out  easily  and  politely,  by  saying  to 
him,  "Mark,  don't  you  think  you  are 
wasting  your  time  and  talents  in  doing 
local  work?" 

"V/hat  do  you  mean?"  said  Mark. 

"Why,  I  think  with  your  style  and 
talent  you  could  make  more  money 
writing  for  first-class  magazines  than  in 
such  work  as  you  are  doing  now." 

"That  means  that  you  don't  want  me 
any  more,  I  suppose?"  and  he  put  his  feet 
on  the  desk  and  smiled  blandly  at  Barnes. 

"Well,  I  think  you  are  better  fitted 
for  that  class  of  work." 

"The  fact  is  you  have  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  I  am  not  the  kind  of  a 
man  you  want." 


54  Mark  Twain 


"Well,  if  you  will  have  it,"  said 
Barnes.  "You  are  not.  You  are  the 
laziest,  most  shiftless,  good-for-nothing 
specimen  I  ever  saw  around  a  newspaper 
office.  I  have  tried  for  six  months  to 
get  some  work  out  of  you  and  failed,  and 
I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is 
useless  to  keep  you  any  longer." 

"Barnes,"  replied  Twain,  in  his  most 
placid  manner,  "you  are  not  as  smart  a 
man  as  I  thought  you  were.  You  have 
been  six  months  in  finding  that  out, 
and  I  knew  it  the  day  I  came  to  work. 
Give  us  an  order  on  the  office  for  three 
days'  pay  and  I  git." 

One  of  the  printers  employed  upon 
the  Call  at  the  time,  furnishes  the  follow 
ing  reminiscence: 

"One  evening  Clemens  came  into  our 
room  where  we  were  shining  our  boots. 

"What's  up,  boys?"  he  asked. 

"We're  going  to  the  theatre." 

"But  it's  not  seven  yet,  you've  plenty 
of  time, "said  Clemens,  sitting  down  on 
the  corner  of  the  bed.  "I  want  to  tell 
you  a  good  story,"  and  he  proceeded  to 


His  Life  and  Work.  55 

entertain  us  with  an  account  of  his  latest 
practical  joke.  This  reminded  him  of  a 
personal  experience  on  a  steamboat,  which 
in  turn  led  to  a  graphic  description  of 
his  life  on  the  Mississippi.  He  talked  on 
without  pause,  holding  our  closest  inter 
est,  by  his  artful  blending  of  humor, 
pathos,  vivid  description  and  thrilling 
incident,  until  at  length,  breaking  off 
suddenly,  he  said  with  a  laugh: 

'/Well,  boys,  if  you're  going  to  the 
theater,  it's  time  you  were  off." 

'  'We  drew  our  watches.  It  was  eleven 
o'clock." 

His  love  for  practical  joking  while 
living  in  California,  called  forth  the  fol 
lowing  from  a  San  Francisco  paper  some 
years  ago: 

' 'There  have  been  moments  in  the  lives 
of  various  kind-hearted  and  respectable 
citizens  of  California  and  Nevada,  when, 
if  Mark  Txvain  were  before  them  as 
members  of  a  vigilance  committee  for  any 
mild  crime,  such  as  mule-stealing  or 
arson,  it  is  to  be  feared  his  shrift  would 
have  been  short.  What  a  dramatic 


Mark  Twain 


picture  the  idea  conjures  up,  to  be  sure! 
Mark,  before  those  honest  men,  infuriated 
by  his  practical  jokes,  trying  to  show 
them  what  an  innocent  creature  he  was 
when  it  came  to  mules,  or  how  the  only 
policy  of  fire  insurance  he  held  had 
lapsed,  how  void  of  guile  he  was  in  any 
direction,  and  all  -with  that  inimitable 
drawl,  that  perplexed  countenance,  and 
the  peculiar  scraping  back  of  the  left  foot, 
like  a  boy  speaking  his  first  piece  at 
school.  It  is  but  fair  to  say  that  the  fun 
that  Mark  mixed  up  for  citizens  in  those 
days  was  not  altogether  appreciated  in 
the  midst  of  it,  for  some  one,  touched  too 
sharply,  surge  bat  amarialiquid,  and  Mark 
had  another  denouncer  joined  to  the 
wounded  throng." 

"I  think  I  may  justly  claim  to  having 
kept  Mark  Twain  in  the  realms  of  liter 
ature,"  said  General  John  McComb  to 
the  writer  not  long  ago.  "In  1864  Mark 
Twain  was  city  editor  of  the  Morning 
Call.  In  those  days  the  city  editor  of  a 
San  Francisco  newspaper  had  something 
else  to  do  than  sit  at  his  desk,  make  out 


His  Life  and  Work. 


details  and  read  copy.  Mark  used  gen 
erally  to  look  out  for  the  late  police  news, 
would  report  a  lecture  or  anything  that 
came  to  hand.  I  think  the  local  staff 
then  consisted  of  himself  and  one  reporter. 
Things  did  not  go  exactly  to  Mark's 
liking;  he  detested  police  reporting,  and 
would  not  go  to  the  City  Hall  any  oftener 
than  he  was  obliged  to.  He  was  out  of 
his  sphere,  he  thought,  and,  as  a  conse 
quence,  used  to  be  disatisned  with  the 
world  in  general  and  newspaper  work  in 
particular.  One  morning  I  met  him  at 
the  corner  of  Clay  and  Montgomery 
Streets.  We  stopped,  shook  hands,  and 
he  said: 

"  'Mac,  I've  done  my  last  newspaper 
work;  I'm  going  back  East.7 

"  'What  do  you  mean?'  I  asked. 

"  'Well,"  he  replied,  "I've  been  trying 
to  get  out  of  this  work  a  long  while. 
Sometime  since  I  made  application 
through  some  friends  at  Washington,  for 
an  appointment  as  Government  pilot  on 
the  Mississippi  River.  I  have  just  re 
ceived  notification  that  my  application 


58  Mark  Twain 


was  successful.     The  salary  is  $300   per 
month,  and  it  is  not  hard  work." 

''I  was  a  great  deal  surprised  and  dis 
appointed.  Clemens  and  I  had  become 
warm  friends,  and  I  had  conceived  a  high 
regard  for  his  literary  ability,  although  I 
could  see  he  was  more  or  less  hampered 
by  his  surroundings.  I  determined  to 
do  what  I  could  to  cause  him  to  recon 
sider  his  determination.  With  this  object 
in  view  I  said  to  him:  (Sam,  you  are 
making  the  mistake  of  your  life.  There 
is  a  better  place  for  you  than  a  Mississippi 
steamboat.  You  have  a  style  of  writing 
that  is  fresh  and  original  and  is  bound  to 
be  popular.  If  you  don't  like  the  tread 
mill  work  of  a  newspaper  man,  strike  up 
higher;  write  sketches,  write  a  book; 
you'll  find  a  market  for  your  stuff,  and 
in  time  you'll  be  appreciated  and  get 
more  money  than  you  can  standing 
alongside  the  wheel  of  a  steamboat. 
There's  nothing  in  this  pilot  business 
either.  You  say  }TOU  are  to  get  $300  a 
month — that's  ia  greenbacks  you  re 
member.  Now  $300  in  greenbacks  won't 


His  Life  and  Work. 


go  a  great  way  as  you  know.  Then 
again,  the  war  will  be  over  in  a  little 
while  and  where'  11  you  be?  You  will  be 
thrown  out  of  Government  employ  and 
you'll  have  to  fight  for  work  with  a  lot  of 
older  and  more  experienced  men.  If  you 
succeed,  what  will  happen?  You'll  be  a 
river  pilot  all  the  rest  of  your  days;  and 
you  know  what  that  is.  No,  Sam,  don't 
you  drop  your  pen  now,  stick  to  it,  and 
it  will  make  your  fortune." 

"He  listened  very  attentively  to  what  I 
had  said,  and  I  saw  that  I  had  made  an 
impression.  He  said  he  would  think  it 
over,  shook  my  hand  and  passed  on  down 
Clay  Street.  The  next  day  he  came  into 
my  office  and  the  first  thing  he  said  was: 
'Now,  Mac,  I've  taken  your  advice.  I 
thought  it  all  over  last  night,  and  finally 
I  wrote  to  Washington  declining  the  ap 
pointment,  and  so  I'll  stick  to  the  news 
paper  work  a  while  longer." 

On  one  occasion  Clemens  was  standing 
at  the  corner  of  Clay  and  Montgomery 
Streets,  leaning  against  a  lamp  post  and 
holding  a  cigar  box  under  his  arm.  Mrs. 


60  Mark  Twain 


Captain  Edward  Poole,  a  very  beautiful 
woman,  and  as  bright  and  witty  as  beau 
tiful,  carne  along  and  stopped  and  held 
out  her  hand,  saying:  "Why,  Mark, 
where  are  you  going  in  such  a  hurry?" 

"I'm  m-o-o-v-ing,"  drawled  Mark,  at 
the  sams  time  opening  the  cigar  box 
disclosing  a  pair  cf  blue  socks,  a  pipe  and 
two  paper  collars. 

He  never  cared  for  the  ladies,  was  in 
fact  a  fish  out  of  water  when  he  happened 
to  be  near  them.  While  employed  on 
the  daily  Alta,  he  called  at  a  dressmaker's 
establishment,  and  for  ten  minutes 
addressed  a  wax  figure  of  a  lady,  before 
discovering  his  mistake. 

In  the  spring  of  1865  he  became  in 
terested  with  Bret  Harte  in  the  conduct 
of  the  Calif ornian.  While  sub-editor  of 
that  magazine  he  produced  many  sketches 
of  merit  which  were  widely  copied  in  the 
Eastern  press. 

In  a  series  of  articles  entitled  ' ' Answers 
to  Correspondents,"  contributed  to  the 
Calif  ornian^  appeared  the  following: 

'SiMON  WH^KivKR/  Sonora. — The  fol- 


His  Life  and  Work.  61 

lowing  simple  and  touching  remarks  and 
accompanying  poem  have  just  come  to 
hand  from  the  rich  gold-mining  region  of 
Sonora: 

"  lTo  Mr.  Mark  Twain:  The  within 
parson,  which  I  have  sot  to  poetry  under 
the  name  and  style  of  cHe  Done  His 
I^evel  Best,'  was  one  among  the  whitest 
men  I  ever  see,  and  it  ain't  every  man 
that  knowed  him  that  can  find  it  in  his 
heart  to  say  he's  glad  the  poor  cuss  is 
busted  and  gone  home  to  the  States. 
He  was  here  in  an  early  day,  and  he 
was  the  handyest  man  about  takin'  holt 
of  anything  that  come  along  you  most 
ever  see,  I  judge.  He  was  a  cheerful, 
stirrin'  cretur,'  always  doin'  something, 
and  no  man  can  say  he  ever  see  him  do 
anything  by  halvers.  Preachin'  was  his 
natural  gait,  but  he  warn't  a  man  to  lay 
back  and  twidle  his  thums  because  there 
didn't  happen  to  be  nothin'  doin1  in  his 
own  especial  line — no,  sir,  he  was  a  man 
who  would  meander  forth  and  stir  up 
something  for  hisself.  His  last  acts  was 
to  go  to  his  pile  o'  'kings-tf^'  (calklatin' 


62  Mark  Twain 


to  fill  but  which  he  didn't  fill)  when 
there  was  a  'flush'  out  agin  him,  and 
naturally,  you  see,  he  went  under.  And 
so  he  was  cleaned  out,  as  you  may  say, 
and  he  struck  the  home-trail,  cheerful 
but  flat  broke.  I  knowed  this  talented 
man  in  Arkansaw,  and  if  you  would 
print  this  humbly  tribute  to  his  gorgis 
abilities,  you  would  greatly  obleege  his 
onhappy  friend/ 

"HE  DONE  His  LEVEL  BEST. 

"Was  he  mining  on  the  flat — 

He  done  it  with  a  zest; 
Was  he  a  leading  of  the  choir — 

He  done  his  level  best. 

If  he'd  a  reg'lar  task  to  do, 

He  never  took  no  rest; 
Or  if  'twas  off-and-on— the  same — 

He  done  his  level  best. 

If  he  was  preachin*  on  his  beat, 
He'd  tramp  from  east  to  west, 

And  north  to  south — in  cold  and  heat 
He  done  his  level  best. 

He'd  yank  a  sinner  outen  (Hades),* 

And  land  him  with  the  blest; 
Then  snatch  a  prayer'n  waltz  in  again, 

And  do  his  level  best. 


His  Life  and  Work.  63 

He'd  cuss  and  sing  and  howl  and  pray, 
And  dance  and  drink  and  jest, 

And  lie  and  steal — all  one  to  him — 
He  done  his  level  best. 

Whatever  this  man  was  sot  to  do, 

He  done  it  with  a  zest; 
No  matter  what  his  contract  was, 

He'd  do  his  level  best. 

'October,  1865,' 

'  'Verily  this  man  was  gifted  with  'gorgis 
abilities/  and  it  is  a  happiness  to  me  to 
embalm  the  memory  of  their  lustre  in 
these  columns.  If  it  were  not  that  the 
poet  crop  is  unusually  large  and  rank  in 
California  this  year,  I  would  encourage 
you  to  continue  writing,  Simon;  but  as  it 
is,  perhaps  it  might  be  too  risky  in  you 
to  enter  against  so  much  opposition." 

The  nomadic  taint  ran  riot  in  the  blood 
of  both  Mark  Twain  and  Bret  Harte,  and 
they  one  day  deserted  the  California^  and 
started  inland  for  another  delusive  exper 
iment  in  mining  for  gold.  On  returning 
to  San  Francisco,  Clemens  found  his 
health  failing  and  made  arrangements  to 
go  to  the  Sandwich  Islands  as  a  news 
paper  correspondent.  Before  his  departure 


64  Mark  Twain 


he  held  his  first  interview  with  Artemus 
Ward,  the  published  report  of  which  was 
widely  quoted. 

He  sailed  in  1866  for  Honolulu. 
There  was  a  wedding  on  board  the 
vessel,  and  Mark  gave  away  the  bride. 
The  groom  was  greatly  vexed  over  the 
absence  of  a  wedding  ring,  when 
Mark  reached  up  and  pulled  off  one  of 
the  huge  curtain  rings  large  enough  to 
go  around  the  girl's  two  arms.  He  held 
it  in  position  on  her  finger  at  the  proper 
time,  and  as  she  was  a  remarkably  pretty 
girl  he  took  good  care  to  exercise  his 
privilege  of  kissing  her  at  the  close. 

Arriving  in  Honolulu,  he  proceeded  to 
write  up  the  sugar  plantations,  and 
descriptions  of  life  and  character  on  the 
islands.  His  letters  were  very  readable. 

They  were  mostly  published  in  the 
Sacramento  Union.  He  wrote,  among 
other  things,  a  most  thrilling  description 
of  a  burning  crater  some  miles  around, 
full  of  white  and  red  heated  crystal  fire 
caverns  and  crimson  lava. 

There  is  a  touch   of  wondrous  beauty 


His  Life  and  Work. 


in  his  picture  of  the  Sandwich  Islands 
written  some  years  after: 

'  'No  alien  land  in  all  the  world  has  any 
deep,  strong,  charm  for  ine  but  that  one, 
no  other  land  could  so  longingly  and  so 
beseechingly  haunt  me,  sleeping  and 
waking,  through  half  a  lifetime  as  that 
one  has  done.  Other  things  leave  me, 
but  it  abides;  other  things  change,  but  it 
remains  the  same.  For  me  its  balmy 
airs  are  always  blowing,  its  summer  seas 
flashing  in  the  sun,  the  pulsing  of  its  surf 
beat  is  in  my  ear;  I  can  see  its  garlanded 
crags,  its  leaping  cascades,  its  plumy 
palms  drowsing  by  its  shore,  its  remote 
summits  floating  like  islands  above  the 
cloud  rack;  I  can  feel  the  spirit  of  its 
woodland  solitudes.  I  can  hear  the  plash 
of  its  brooks;  in  my  nostrils  still  lives  the 
breath  of  flowers  that  perished  twenty 
years  ago.  And  these  world  wanderers 
who  sit  before  us  here  have  lately  looked 
upon  these  things!  and  with  eyes  of  flesh, 
not  the  unsatisfying  vision  of  the  spirit. 
I  envy  them  that!" 

The  climate  of  Hawaii  soon  restored 


66  Mark  Twain 


him  to  perfect  health,  and  after  an  ab 
sence  of  two  months,  he  returned  to  San 
Francisco,  with  renewed  spirits,  and  with 
his  world-wide  fame  still  before  him. 


His  Life  and  Work.  67 


IV. 

ONE  OF  THE  "INNOCENTS." 


During  the  winter  months  of  1866-7, 
a  coterie  of  bright  journalists  eked  out  a 
miserable  existence  in  San  Francisco. 
Prominent  among  the  Bohemians  who 
lunched  together  at  the  Miners'  Restau 
rant  were  Charles  Warren  Stoddard,  F. 
Bret  Harte,  Charles  H.  Webb,  Prentice 
Mulford  and  Mark  Twain.  None  of  these 
gentlemen  were  quite  so  poor  and  needy 
as  Sam  Clemens,  who  on  several  occa 
sions  ventured  upon  the  dangerous 
border  land  of  starvation.  One  day  a 
comedian  from  a  local  theatre  approached 
Mark  on  the  street; 


68  Mark  Twain 


"See  here,  Clemens,"  said  he,  "I  need 
a  half-dozen  good  jokes.  Get  'em  up  and 
I'll  give  you  five  dollars." 

' 'Sorry,  old  man,"  answered  Mark, 
thoughtfully,  "but  I'm  afraid  the  scheme 
won't  work." 

"Why  not?" 

"Well,  the  fact  is,  I'm  so  d d  poor, 

if  I  was  found  with  $5  on  my  person 
people  would  say  I  stole  them;  on  the 
other  hand,  if  you  got  off  any  decent 
jokes  people  would  say  you  stole  them, 
too." 

In  January  1867,  Stoddard  and  Mul- 
ford  gave  several  successful  public  enter 
tainments  in  San  Francisco,  and  fired 
with  ambition,  Mark  Twain  started  forth 
upon  a  lecture  tour  through  the  smaller 
cities  of  California  and  Nevada.  In 
those  days  most  any  sort  of  an  enter 
tainment  brought  out  a  crowd,  and  when 
it  was  announced  one  day  in  Carson  City 
that  Mark  was  to  deliver  a  lecture  for 
the  benefit  of  something  or  other,  at  the 
Episcopal  Church,  it  was  generally  un- 


His  Life  and  Work.  69 


derstood  that  the  house  would  be 
crowded. 

"Well,  the  night  arrived,"  writes  a 
friend  who  was  present.  "Mark  as 
cended  the  steps  into  the  pulpit  about 
8  o'clock,  there  being  a  whole  lot  of  the 
boys  and  young  women,  friends  of  his, 
as  well  as  a  good  many  old  people  in 
front.  Mark  made  a  very  polite  bow, 
and  then  unfolded  a  gigantic  roll  of  brown 
paper.  People  thought  at  first  it  was  a 
map,  but  it  turned  out  to  be  his  lecture 
written  on  great  sheets  of  grocers'  brown 
paper,  with  an  ordinary  grocers'  marking 
brush.  After  his  bow  he  turned  his 
back  around  to  the  audience  and  craned 
his  head  up  to  the  lamp  and  thus  read 
from  the  big  sheets  as  though  it  would 
be  impossible  for  him  to  see  any  other 
way. 

"The  lecture  was  on  'The  Future  of 
Nevada,'  and  was  the  funniest  thing  I 
ever  heard.  He  prophesied  the  great  era 
of  prosperity  that  was  before  us  and 
sought  to  encourage  us  residents  of  the 
sagebrush  region  by  foretelling  what 


Mark  Twain 


appeared  to  be  Golconda-like  tales  of 
impossible  mineral  discoveries.  Right 
on  the  heels  of  it,  however,  came  the 
remarkable  discoveries  of  Virginia  City, 
and  then  we  thought  he  wasn't  so  far  off 
in  his  humorous  productions.  Many  a 
time  have  I  thought  of  that  lecture  of 
Mark  Twain.  It  ought  to  have  been 
published.  I  have  read  all  his  books,  and 
I  never  saw  anything  in  any  of  them 
better  than  this." 

For  several  months  Mr.  Clemens  con 
tinued  this  platform  experience  with 
profit,  the  while  writing  interesting 
letters  to  the  Eastern  newspapers  and 
contributing  sketches  to  the  periodicals. 
In  March  1867,  he  published  his  first 
book,  "The  Jumping  Frog  of  Calaveras," 
a  collection  of  his  best  fugitive  sketches, 
and  this  immediately  aroused  public  at 
tention,  not  only  in  America  but  also  in 
England. 

Soon  after  he  sailed  for  New  York  by 
way  of  Panama,  and  upon  arriving  there, 
having  found  that  his  little  volume  was 
well  received,  arranged  for  an  English 


His  Life  and  Work. 


edition,  which  was  published  by  Messrs. 
Routiedge  &  Sons  of  London. 

From  New  York  Mark  proceeded  to 
Washington,  where  he  endeavored  to 
earn  his  living  by  writing  letters  to  the 
San  Francisco  Alta,  and  delivering  a 
lecture  or  two.  His  lecture  experience 
in  Washington  was  brief  but  interesting, 
and  he  tells  all  about  it  in  his  inimical 
way,  as  follows: 

"Well,  now,  I'll  have  to  tell  you  some 
thing  about  that  lecture.  It  was  a  little 
the  hardest  and  roughest  experience  I 
ever  underwent  in  my  whole  career  as  a 
lecturer.  Now,  I  had  not  been  in 
Washington  more  than  a  day  or  two 
before  a  friend  of  mine  came  to  my  room 
at  the  hotel  early  one  moining,  wakened 
me  out  of  a  sound  sleep,  and  nearly 
stunned  me  by  asking  if  I  was  aware  of 
the  tact  that  I  was  to  deliver  a  lecture  at 
Lincoln  hall  that  evening.  I  told  him 
no,  and  that  he  must  be  crazy  to  get  out 
of  bed  at  such  an  unseemly  hour  to  ask 
such  a  foolish  question.  But  he  soon 
assured  me  that  he  was  perfectly  sane  by 


7 2  Mark  Twain 


showing  me  the  morning  papers,  which 
all  announced  that  Mark  Twain  was  to 
lecture  that  evening  and  that  his  subject 
would  be  'The  Sandwich  Islands.'  To 
say  that  I  was  surprised  would  be  putting 
it  mildly.  I  was  mad,  for  I  thought 
some  one  had  put  up  a  game  on  me. 

"Well,  on  careful  inquiry,  I  learned 
that  an  old  theatrical  friend  of  mine 
thought  he  would  do  me  a  favor.  So  he 
made  all  the  necessary  arrangements  for 
me  to  lecture,  with  the  exception  of  the 
slight  circumstance  that  he  neglected  to 
inform  me  of  any  of  his  intentions.  He 
rented  Lincoln  hall,  billed  the  town,  and 
sent  the  newspapers  advertisements  and 
notices  about  the  coming  lecture.  And 
the  worst  of  it  was  he  had  done  all  his 
\vork  thoroughly.  After  learning  this  I 
\vas  in  a  dilemma.  I  had  never  prepared 
any  lecture  on  the  Sandwich  Islands. 
\Vhat  was  I  to  do?  I  could  not  back  out 
by  telling  the  people  that  I  was  unpre 
pared.  No,  that  was  out  of  the  question, 
because  the  people  wouldn't  believe  it. 
The  billing  of  the  town  had  been  too  well 


His  Life  and  Work. 


done  for  that.  So  there  was  only  one 
thing  left  for  me  to  do,  and  that  was  to 
lock  myself  in  my  room  and  write  that 
lecture  between  the  breakfast  hour  and 
half-past  seven  that  evening.  Well,  I 
did  it,  and  was  on  hand  at  the  advertised 
hour,  facing  one  of  the  biggest  audiences 
I  ever  addressed. 

(<I  did  not  use  my  manuscript,  but  in 
those  days  I  always  had  my  lecture  in 
writing,  and  kept  it  on  a  reading  stand 
at  one  end  of  the  place  where  I  stood  on 
the  platform.  I  was  very  good  at  mem 
orizing,  and  rarely  had  any  trouble  in 
speaking  without  notes;  but  the  very  fact 
that  I  had  my  manuscript  near  at  hand 
where  I  could  readily  turn  to  it  without 
having  to  undergo  the  mortification  of 
pulling  it  from  my  pocket,  gave  me 
courage  and  kept  me  from  making  awk 
ward  pauses.  But  the  writing  of  that 
Sandwich  Island  lecture  in  one  day  was 
the  toughest  job  ever  put  on  me." 

One  afternoon  while  sitting  in  his 
dingy  little  room,  smoking  his  cob  pipe, 
Mark  became  deeply  interested  in  reading 


Mark  Twain 


about  the  contemplated  trip  of  the  steam 
ship  ''Quaker  City"  to  Europe  and  the 
Holy  L,and,  and  saw  the  chance  of  his 
life.  He  wrote  to  General  John  Mc- 
Cornb,  one  of  the  proprietors  of  the  San 
Francisco  Daily  Alta  California,  asking 
for  an  advance  of  $1,200  in  gold,  propos 
ing  to  pay  it  in  letters  at  $15  apiece.  It 
was  no  small  request  to  make  of  a  San 
Francisco  newspaper  in  the  •  '6o's,  but 
McComb  induced  his  partners  to  grant 
the  request. 

That  was  how  Mark  Twain  formed  one 
of  the  party  who  sailed  in  the  steamship 
" Quaker  City,"  Captain  Duncan,  for  an 
extended  excursion  to  Palestine  and  the 
Holy  Land.  This  voyage  to  the  different 
seaports  of  Southern  Europe  and  the 
Orient  gave  him  an  opportunity  of  which 
he  made  abundant  use.  The  excursion 
was  a  very  exclusive  sort  of  affair,  and 
Captain  Duncan  is  authority  for  the 
statement  that  Clemens  had  represented 
himself  when  he  applied  for  passage  on 
the  "Quaker  City,"  as  a  Baptist  minister 
in  ill  health,  from  San  Francisco. 


His  Life  and  Work. 


Clemens  had  accompanied  the  excur 
sion  party  solely  as  a  newspaper  corres 
pondent.  He  fell  in  with  a  crowd  of 
good,  respectable  Bourgeois  and  Bour 
geoises,  and  if  the  exaggerated  narrative 
of  the  "Innocents  Abroad,"  published 
two  years  later,  is  to  be  relied  upon,  he 
certainly  must  have  kept  his  pious- 
minded  fellow  voyagers  in  a  constant 
state  of  nervous  excitement. 

The  story  of  that  eventful  tour  has 
been  well  told  in  "Innocents  Abroad." 
He  set  out  to  explore  the  Holy  L,and  and 
Egypt,  stopping,  by  the  way,  at  Athens. 
His  description  of  the  city  at  night  is  one 
of  the  most  vivid  vignettes  on  record. 

"The  full  moon  was  riding  high  in  the 
heavens  now.  We  sauntered  carelessly 
and  unthinkingly  to  the  edge  of  the 
lofty  battlements  of  the  citadel,  and 
looked  down.  A  vision!—  and  such  a 
vision!  Athens  by  moonlight!  It  lay 
in  the  level  plain,  right  under  our  feet  — 
all  spread  abroad  like  a  picture,  and  we 
looked  upon  it  as  we  might  be  looking  at 
it  from  a  balloon.  We  saw  no  semblance 


Mark  Twain 


of  a  street,  but  every  house,  every  window, 
every  clinging  vine,  every  projection 
were  marked  as  clearly  as  it  were  at 
noonday;  and  yet  there  was  no  glare,  no 
glitter,  nothing  harsh  or  repulsive.  The 
harshest  city  was  flooded  with  the 
yellowest  light  that  ever  streamed  from 
the  moon,  and  seemed  like  some  living 
creature  wrapped  in  peaceful  slumber. 
On  its  further  side  was  a  little  temple, 
whose  delicate  pillars  and  ornate  front 
glowed  with  a  rich  lustre  that  chained 
the  eye  like  a  spell;  and  nearer  by,  the 
palace  of  the  king  reared  its  creamy 
walls  out  of  the  mist  of  a  great  garden  of 
shrubbery,  that  was  flecked  all  over  with 
a  random  shower  of  amber  lights — a 
spray  of  golden  sparks  that  lost  their 
brightness  in  the  glory  of  the  moon,  and 
glinted  softly  upon  the  sea  of  dark  foliage 
like  the  pallid  star  of  the  milky  way. 
Overhead  the  stately  columns,  majestic 
still  in  their  ruin;  underfoot,  the  dream 
ing  city;  in  the  distance,  the  silver  sea. 
The  picture  needed  nothing.  It  was 
perfect." 


His  Life  and  Work. 


Equally  realistic,  vivid  and  interesting 
were  his  sketches  of  scenes  and  incidents 
in  Palestine  and  Egypt.  Of  his  experi 
ence  with  a  camel  in  Syria,  he  wrote  as 
folio  ws,  in  a  vein  of  the  richest  humor: 

"In  Syria,  at  the  headwaters  of  the 
Jordan,  a  camel  took  charge  of  my  over 
coat  while  the  tents  were  being  pitched, 
and  examined  it  with  a  critical  eye,  all 
over,  with  as  much  interest  as  if  he  had 
an  idea  of  getting  one  made  like  it;  and 
then,  after  he  was  done  figuring  on  it  as 
an  article  of  apparel,  he  began  to  con 
template  it  as  an  article  of  diet.  He 
put  his  foot  on  it,  and  lifted  one  of  the 
sleeves  out  with  his  teeth,  and  chewed 
and  chewed  at  it,  gradually  taking  it  in, 
and  all  the  while  opening  and  closing 
his  eyes  in  a  kind  of  religious  ecstasy,  as 
if  he  had  never  tasted  anything  so  good 
as  an  overcoat  before  in  his  life.  Then 
he  smacked  his  lips  once  or  twice,  and 
reached  after  the  other  sleeve.  Next  he 
tried  the  velvet  collar,  and  smiled  a  smile 
of  such  contentment  that  it  was  plain  to 
see  that  he  regarded  that  as  the  daintiest 


J8  Mark  Twain 


thing  about  an  overcoat.  The  tails  went 
next,  along  with  some  percussion  caps 
and  cough  candy,  and  some  figpaste  from 
Constantinople.  And  then  my  news 
paper  correspondence  dropped  out,  and 
he  took  a  chance  in  that — manuscript 
letters  written  for  the  home  papers.  But 
he  was  treading  on  dangerous  ground 
now.  He  began  to  come  across  solid 
wisdom  in  those  documents  that  was 
weighty  on  his  stomach;  and  occasionally 
he  would  take  a  joke  that  would  shake 
him  up  till  it  loosened  his  teeth;  it  was 
getting  to  be  perilous  times  with  him, 
but  he  held  his  grip  with  good  courage 
and  hopefully,  till  at  last  he  began  to 
stumble  on  statements  that  not  even  a 
camel  could  swallow  with  impunity.  He 
began  to  gag  and  gasp,  and  his  eyes  to 
stand  out,  and  his  forelegs  to  spread,  and 
in  about  a  quarter  of  a  minute  he  fell 
over  as  stiff  as  a  carpenters'  workbench, 
and  died  a  death  of  indescribable  agony. 
I  went  and  pulled  the  manuscript  out  of 
his  mouth,  and  found  that  the  sensitive 
creature  had  choked  to  death  on  one  of 


His  Life  and  Work. 


the  mildest  and  gentlest  statements  of 
fact  that  I  ever  laid  before  a  trusting 
public." 

The  trip  of  the  "Quaker  City"  was 
not  designed  as  a  lengthy  tour  of  Europe, 
but  merely  a  midsummer  excursion  of  a 
few  months.  Brief  as  was  the  voyage, 
however,  Mark  Twain  made  the  most  of 
it,  and  gathered  material  not  only  enough 
in  quantity  to  produce  a  large  volume, 
but  enough  in  quality  to  give  him  ever 
lasting  fame. 

Returning  to  New  York,  he  proceeded 
to  Washington,  where  he  commenced  a 
new  career,  as  the  special  correspondent 
ol  newspapers  in  San  Francisco,  Chicago, 
and  elsewhere. 


8o  Mark  Twain 


V, 
EIS  riE-ST  LITEEABY  SUCCESS, 


During  the  following  winter  Mark 
Twain  sojourned  at  the  National  capital, 
working  at  odd  moments  upon  the  initial 
chapter  of  his  "Innocents  Abroad."  His 
Bohemian  habits  were  retained  in  every 
particular,  at  least  the  statement  is  war 
ranted  by  a  friend  who  writes  of  Mark's 
life  at  this  time: 

4 'His  room  was  a  perfect  chaos,  his 
table  a  curiosity  in  its  wa}\  On  it  could 
be  seen  any  thing — from  soiled  manuscript 
to  old  boots.  He  never  laid  his  paper 
on  the  table  when  writing,  partly  because 
there  was  no  available  space  and  partly 
because  the  position  so  necessitated  was 


His  Life  and  Work.  81 

too  much  for  his  lazy  bones.  With  both  feet 
plunged  in  manuscript,  chair  tilted  back 
and  note-book  and  pencil  in  hand  he  did 
all  the  writing  I  ever  saw  him  do.  An 
ordinary  atmosphere  would  not  suffice  to 
set  in  motion  the  stream  of  Mark's  ideas. 
It  must  first  be  thoroughly  saturated  with 
the  vilest  tobacco  smoke,  which  he  puffed 
from  a  villainous  pipe — said  pipe  having 
never  received  a  cleaning  —  as  many 
newspaper  friends  of  those  days  can 
testify.  He  regarded  this  pipe  as  his 
salvation  from  bores,  taking  a  ghastly 
delight  in  puffing  away  like  a  locomotive 
when  an  undesirable  visitor  dropped  in, 
and  eagerly  watching  the  paleness  which 
gradually  crept  over  the  face  of  the  enemy 
as  the  poisonous  stuff  got  in  its  work." 

One  day  while  Mark  was  busily  en 
gaged  with  his  work,  in  his  dingy  little 
room,  a  tall,  sallow-faced  man,  with  a 
miserable  expression  of  countenance,  and 
a  deep,  consumptive  cough,  entered  the 
room  and  without  an  invitation  sat  down. 
Turning  to  the  visitor,  Clemens  said: 

"Well-.11 


82  Mark  Twain 


The  visitor  said  "Well." 

"What  can  I  do  for  you?"  asked  the 
humorist. 

"Well,  nothin'  in  particular.  I  heard 
'em  say  that  you  are  the  man  that 
writes  funny  things,  and  as  I  have  several 
hours  to  loaf  around  before  the  train 
leaves,  I  thought  I  would  come  around 
and  get  you  to  make  me  laugh  a  little.  I 
ain't  had  a  good  laugh  in  many  a  day, 
and  I  didn't  know  but  what  you  mout 
accommodate  me." 

Clemens  scowled  at  the  man,  who, 
thinking  that  the  humorist  was  present 
ing  him  with  a  specimen  of  facial  fun, 
began  to  titter. 

"That'll  do  fust  rate,  cap'n,  but  I'd 
ruther  hear  you  talk.  I  can  make  a 
mouth  at  a  man  about  as  easy  as  any 
fellow  you  ever  saw,  an'  w'at  I  want  is  a 
few  words  from  you  that'll  jolt  me  like  a 
wagin  had  backed  agin  me." 

"My  friend,  I  am  very  busy  to-day, 
and—" 

"Yes,  I  know  all  that.  I  am  very 
busy  myself,  except  that  I've  got  about 


His  Life  and  Work.  83 

two  hours  to  loaf,  an'  as  I  said  jest  now, 
I'd  like  for  you  to  get  oft  something  that 
I  can  take  home.  Wy,  I  can  go  around 
an'  git  the  drinks  on  it  for  a  week." 

4 ' Won't  you  have  a  cigar?"  asked 
Clemens,  desirous  of  learning  whether  the 
man  was  a  smoker. 

uNo,  I  never  could  stand  a  seeggah." 

The  humorist  smiled,  and  taking  up 
his  pipe,  filled  it  up  with  strong  tobacco, 
and  began  to  puff.  'Til  keep  him  in 
here,  now,"  mused  the  smoker,  "until  he 
is  as  sick  as  a  dog.  I  wouldn't  consent 
to  his  departure,  if  he  was  to  get  down 
on  his  knees  and  pray  for  deliverance." 

"  No  thing  does  a  man  more  good  than 
a  hearty  laugh,"  the  visitor  said,  cough 
ing  as  a  cloud  of  smoke  surrounded  his 
head.  "Wah,  hoo,  wah,  hoo!  Don't 
you  think  it  is  a  leetle  close  in  here?" 

"Oh,  no,"  replied  Mark,  arising  and 
locking  the  door. 

"I  like  a  little  fresh  a'r,  'specially  when 
thar's  so  much  smoke  in  a  room." 

"Oh,  there's  air  enough  here.  How 
did  you  leave  all  the  folks?" 


84  Mark  Twain 


"Well,  Gabe,  my  youngest — wah,  hoo, 
wall,  lioo — ain't  as  peart  as  he  niout  be, 
but  all  the  others  air  stirrin'.  You  ain't 
got  110  chillun,  I  reckon? " 

"No,"  the  humorist  replied,  as  he  vig 
orously  puffed  his  pipe. 

"Well,  I'm  sorry  for  you.  Thar 
ain't  iiothin'  that  adds  to  a  man's  nachul 
enjoyment  like  chillun.  That  boy  Gabe, 
what  I  was  talkin'  about  jest  now,  w'y,  I 
wouldn't  give  him  up  fur  the  finest  yoke 
of  steers  you  ever  seen." 

"You  wouldn't?" 

"No  sir,  wouldn't  tech  'em  with  a  ten- 
foot  pole — would  refuse  'em  pine  blank. 
Podner,  don't  you — wah,  hoo,  wah,  hoo 
— think  it's  a  gettin'  a  little  too  clost  in 
here  now?" 

"No,  not  a  bit,  just  right." 

"Well,  I  don't  know  the  style  in  this 
place,  but  I'll  try  an'  put  up  with  it. 

After  a  moment's  silence  the  visitor 
continued: 

"When  I  left  home,  Mur — that's  my 
wife — said  to  me,  saj'S  she,  'Now,  say, 
while  you  are  thar,  don't  smoke  that  cob 


His  Life  and  Work.  85 


pipe/  I  wanted  to  follow  her  advice, 
but  I  put  my — wah,  hoo,  wah,  hoc, — old 
fuzee  in  my  jeans,  an'  now  I  bl'cve  I'll 
take  a  smoke." 

He  took  out  a  cob  pipe,  and  a  twist  of 
new  tobacco,  known  in  his  neighborhood 
as  "Tough  Sam,"  whittled  off  a  handful, 
filled  his  pipe,  lighted  it,  placed  his  feet 
on  the  stove  and  went  to  work.  Mark 
soon  began  to  snuff  the  foul  air,  but  he 
was  determined  to  stand  it.  The  visitor 
blew  smoke  like  a  tar  kiln.  Mark  grew 
restless.  Beads  of  cold  perspiration  began 
to  gather  on  his  brow.  Throwing  down 
his  pipe,  he  hastily  unlocked  the  door, 
and  fled.  On  the  sidewalk  he  met  a 
friend. 

"Hello,   Clemens,  what's  the  matter?" 

Twain  related  what  had  occurred. 

"Oh,  you  mean  that  fellow  in  brown 
jeans?" 

"Yes." 

' l You  ought  to  have  had  better  sense 
than  to  light  your  pipe  in  his  presence." 

"Why?" 


86  Mark  Twain 


"  Because  he's  a  member  of  the  Ar 
kansas  Legislature. " 

William  M.  S lev/art,  United  States 
Senator  from  Nevada,  was  an  acquaint 
ance  of  the  humorist  at  this  time,  and 
some  years  since,  while  in  a  reminiscent 
mood,  related  the  following:  "I  knew 
Mark  Twain  in  Washington,  at  a  time 
when  he  was  without  money.  He  told 
me  his  condition  and  said  he  was  very 
anxious  to  get  out  his  book.  He  showed 
me  his  notes  and  I  saw  that  they  would 
make  a  great  book  and  probabl}r  bring 
him  in  a  fortune.  I  promised  that  I 
would  'stake'  him  until  he  had  the  book 
written.  I  made  him  a  clerk  to  my  com 
mittee  in  the  senate,  which  paid  him  $6 
per  day;  then  I  hired  a  man  for  $100  per 
month  to  do  the  work. 

<4I  then  had  rooms  on  F  street  in  a 
house  which  was  kept  by  an  ancient  lady. 
She  belonged  to  an  old  Southern  family 
whose  property  was  lost  during  the  war 
of  the  rebellion.  I  had  three  large  rooms 
on  the  second  floor  and  there  was  also  a 
hall  room.  I  was  very  anxious  that  Sam 


His  Life  and  Work. 


should  stick  to  his  work  until  he  finished 
it,  as  I  was  almost  as  much  interested  as 
he.  I  took  him  to  live  with  me,  and 
gave  him  the  hall  room  to  sleep  in.  He 
did  his  work  in  the  room  which  I  had 
fixed  up  as  a  study.  He  would  work 
during  the  day,  and  in  the  evening  he 
would  read  me  what  he  had  written,  after 
which  he  would  stroll  out  about  the  city 
for  recreation.  He  usually  returned  to 
his  *hall  bedroom  about  midnight  and 
would  sit  up  until  nearly  morning,  read 
ing,  smoking,  whistling  and  singing. 

"His  noise  used  to  be  a  source  of  great 
annoyance  to  the  landlady.  She  was 
very  nervous  and  unable  to  sleep  when 
any  gas  was  burning  in  the  house.  She 
regarded  Sam  as  a  very  careless  fellow 
and  I  don't  think  she  liked  him  very 
well.  She  came  to  me  one  morning  with 
her  eyes  swollen  and  her  appearance  alto 
gether  betokening  a  very  dilapidated 
condition.  She  said  she  had  been  unable 
to  sleep  all  night  and  that  in  fact  for  a 
week  she  had  been  losing  sleep.  Sam 
was  the  cause  of  all  her  trouble,  and  she 


88  Mark  Twain 


told  me  how  he  remained  up  all  the  night 
burning  gas  and  creating  a  rumpus.  I 
informed  Sarn  of  the  landlady's  complaint 
and  told  him  he  ought  to  go  to  bed  at  a 
reasonable  hour  and  not  frighten  the  old 
lady.  Sam  replied  that  that  was  all  the 
fun  he  had,  but  he  promised  to  rnend  his 
ways  and  I  thought  no  more  of  the  mat 
ter. 

"In  a  week  the  landlady  came  to  me 
again,  and  this  time  with  tears  in  her 
eyes.  She  said  she  knew  she  was  re 
ceiving  a  very  handsome  rent  from  me 
for  the  rooms,  and  that  she  also  was 
aware  she  could  not  rent  them  again  dur 
ing  the  season,  but  she  was  compelled  to 
ask  me  to  give  them  up  on  account  of  the 
way  Mr.  Clemens  was  wearing  her  life 
out.  I  felt  truly  sorry  for  the  old  lady. 
I  called  Sam  in  and  repeated  to  him  what 
the  landlady  had  said.  I  told  him  I 
would  thrash  him  if  I  ever  heard  another 
complaint.  I  said  I  did  not  want  to  turn 
him  out  because  I  wanted  him  to  finish 
his  book.  He  made  one  of  his  smart  re 
plies  at  the  expense  of  the  landlady,  and 


His  Life  and  Work.  89 

I  told  him  I  would  thrash  him  then  and 
there.  He  begged  in  a  most  pitiful  way 
for  rne  not  to  do  so,  and  I  could  not  help 
laughing. 

"Seeing  that  he  had  gotten  me  into  a 
good  humor  again  he  said  that  he  would 
not  annoy  the  old  woman  again,  but  that 
he  would  certainly  get  even  with  me  for 
having  threatened  to  thrash  him  if  it 
took  him  ten  years  to  do  so." 

During  the  winter  spent  in  Washing 
ton  Mark  wrote  many  newspaper  letters 
and  a  large  number  of  short,  humorous 
articles.  These  include  "Facts  in  the 
Case  of  the  Great  Beef  Contract, "  and  the 
account  of  his  resignation  as  clerk  of  the 
senate  committee  on  conchology.  He 
also  wrote  "Riley — Newspaper  Corres 
pondent"  which  attracted  a  vast  amount 
of  attention  and  was  liberally  quoted. 

In  March,  1868,  he  sailed  for  San  Fran 
cisco,  for  the  purpose  of  arranging  some 
trivial  business  matter  on  the  Pacific 
Coast.  He  was  absent  about  five  months 
returning  to  New  York  about  August. 
While  in  California  and  on  board  the 


Mark  Twain 


steamship  en  route,  he  completed  the 
manuscript  of  his  ''Innocents  Abroad,  or 
the  New  Pilgrim  Progress." 

Meanwhile  the  San  Francisco  Alta  had 
secured  copyright  upon  Mr.  Clemens' 
letters  from  the  Holy  Land.  General 
John  McComb,  always  the  friend  of  the 
struggling  author,  finally  persuaded  his 
partners  in  the  Alta  office  to  surrender 
the  copyright,  and  Mark  Twain  became 
the  owner  of  ''The  Innocents  Abroad." 

Jn  New  York,  upon  his  return  from 
San  Francisco,  he  resumed  his  newspaper 
correspondence,  and  in  a  letter  to  the 
Chicago  Republican^  dated  New  York, 
August  17, 1868,  he  devoted  three  columns 
to  an  account  of  his  return  voyage  from 
California.  He  carefully  reviewed  the 
matter  of  California  immigration,  and  the 
changes  that  had  taken  place  in  San  Fran 
cisco  since  his  previous  visit.  He  de 
scribed  the  Panama  Canal,  and  vividly 
portrayed  life  and  character  in  Central 
America.  Here  is  an  amusing  extract 
from  his  letter: 

"Possibly  you  know  that  they  have  a 


His  Life  and  Work. 


'revolution'  in  Central  America  every 
time  the  moon  changes.  All  you  have 
to  do  is  to  get  out  in  the  street,  in  Pan 
ama  or  Aspinwall,  and  give  a  whoop, 
and  the  thing  is  done.  Shout,  down 
with  the  Administration!  and  up  with 
somebody  else,  and  revolution  follows. 
Nine-  tenths  of  the  people  break  for  home, 
slam  the  doors  behind  them,  and  get 
under  the  bed.  The  other  tenth  go  and 
overturn  the  Government  and  banish  the 
officials,  from  president  down  to  notary 
public.  Then  for  the  next  thirty  days 
they  inquire  anxiously  of  all  comers  what 
sort  of  a  stir  their  little  shivaree  made  in 
Europe  and  America!  By  that  time  the 
next  revolution  is  ready  to  be  touched 
off,  and  out  they  go." 

From  this  letter  it  appears  that  be  had 
visited  Hartford,  where  in  the  golden 
future,  he  was  to  take  up  his  permanent 
residence.  In  closing  the  letter  to  the 
Chicago  Republican  he  wrote: 

<(I  have  been  about  ten  days  in  Hart 
ford,  and  shall  return  there  before  very 
long.  I  think  it  must  be  the  handsomest 


$2  Mark  Twain 


city  in  the  Union  in  summer.  It  is  the 
moneyed  center  of  the  State;  and  one  of 
its  capitals,  also,  for  Connecticut  is  so 
law-abiding,  and  so  addicted  to  law,  that 
there  is  not  room  enough  in  one  city  to 
manufacture  all  of  the  articles  they  need. 
Hartford  is  the  place  where  the  insurance 
companies  all  live.  They  use  some  of  the 
houses  for  dwellings.  The  others  are  for 
insurance  offices.  So  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  there  is  quite  a  spirit  of  speculative 
enterprise  there.  Many  of  the  inhabi 
tants  have  retired  from  business,  but  the 
others  labor  along  in  the  old  customary 
way,  as  presidents  of  insurance  com 
panies." 

In  1868-9  Clemens  was  living  at  the  Ev 
erett  House  in  New  York  city.  Having 
completed  his  ' 'Innocents  Abroad, "  he 
looked  about  for  a  publisher.  His  visit 
to  Hartford  early  in  August,  was  for  the 
purpose  of  confering  with  a  publisher 
there,  but  he  had  met  with  but  little  en 
couragement.  He  next  tried  a  dozen 
publishing  houses  in  New  York,  but  in 
vain.  He  sent  his  manuscript  to  other 


His  Life  and  Work. 


publishers  in  Boston  and  Philadelphia 
with  like  success.  Somewhat  disheart 
ened  he  laid  the  book  away  in  his  room. 

One  day  he  was  entertaining  the  late 
Albert  D.  Richardson  in  his  apartment. 
In  a  self-disgusted  mood  he  handed 
Richardson  his  manuscript,  to  see  if  his 
friend  thought  it  so  irredeemably  bad. 
Richardson  read  it,  pronounced  it  very 
clever;  full  of  the  extravagant  drollery 
which  the  American  people  relish,  and 
expressed  his  astonishment  that  any  pub 
lisher  of  intelligence  and  experience 
should  have  declined  it. 

"You  can't  be  any  more  astonished 
than  I  am,"  remarked  Clemens,  dryly. 
"These  publishers  have  astonished  as 
much  conceit  out  of  me  as  a  long  seige  of 
sea-sickness." 

Richardson,  who  had  published  several 
books  through  the  American  Publishing 
Company,  said  that  he  was  going  to 
Hartford,  that  he  would  take  the  manu 
script  with  him,  and  that  he  was  sure 
the  company  would  be  glad  to  publish  it. 
He  kept  his  promise  and  placed  the  man- 


Mark  Twain 


uscript  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Bliss,  then 
secretary  of  the  company,  who  was 
pleased  with  it.  But  some  of  the  other 
officers  and  directors  were  averse,  and 
made  so  many  objections  that  Bliss  finally 
declared  that  he  would  publish  the  vol 
ume  on  his  own  account.  This  caused 
some  of  the  others  to  yield,  and  <( Inno 
cents  Abroad"  was  issued,  but  under  pro 
test,  and  many  misgivings  as  to  its  finan 
cial  success. 

The  result  is  well  known.  The  book 
made  Mark  Twain  famous.  The  sale, 
including  pirated  editions,  reached  200,- 
ooo  copies.  The  American  Company 
cleared  in  the  neighborhood  of  $75,000 
by  the  publication.  Mark  was  crazed 
with  joy.  He  wrote  to  his  old  friend, 
Captain  Bixby,  of  the  steamboat  Paul 
Jones: 

"Thirty  tons  of  paper  have  been  used 
in  publishing  my  book  'Innocents 
Abroad.'  It  has  met  with  a  greater  sale 
than  any  book  ever  published,  except 
'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin/  The  volumes  sell 
from  $3  to  $5  according  to  finish,  and  I 


His  Life  and  Work. 


get  one-half  the  profit.  Not  so  bad,  for 
a  scrub  pilot,  is  it?  How  do  you  run 
Plutn  Point — a  son-of-gun  of  a  place?  I 
would  rather  be  a  pilot  than  anything  I 
ever  tried." 

The  London  Saturday  Review  of  Octo 
ber  8,  1869,  reviewed  "  Innocents  Abroad" 
at  great  length,  along  with  other  volumes, 
as  a  book  of  travel.  The  review  was 
written  most  seriously,  and  one  could 
imagine  the  delight  of  the  humorist  in 
reading  this  tribute  to  his  power.  In 
fact  the  review  so  amused  Mark  Twain 
that  he  himself  wrote  a  long  burlesque 
on  the  Saturday  Review  criticism,  in  which 
he  said: 

"To  say  that  'Innocents  Abroad'  is  a 
curious  book  would  be  to  use  the  faintest 
language — would  be  to  speak  of  the  Mat- 
terhorn  as  a  neat  elevation,  or  of  Niagara 
as  being  'nice'  or  'pretty.'  'Curious'  is 
too  tame  a  word  wherewith  to  describe 
the  imposing  insanity  of  this  work. 
There  is  no  word  that  is  large  enough  or 
long  enough.  Let  us,  therefore,  photo 
graph  a  passing  ^glimpse  of  book  and 


$6       t  Mark  Twain 


author,  and  trust  the  rest  to  the  reader. 
Let  the  cultivated  English  student  of 
human  nature  picture  to  himself  this 
Mark  Twain  as  a  person  capable  of  doing 
the  following-described  things — and  not 
only  doing  them,  but  with  incredible  in 
nocence  printing  them  calmly  and  tran 
quilly  in  a  book.  For  instance — 

"He  states  that  he  entered  a  hair 
dresser's  in  Paris  to  get  shaved,  and  the 
first  'rake'  the  barber  gave  with  his  razor, 
it  loosened  his  'hide'  and  lifted  him  out 
of  the  chair. 

"This  is  unquestionably  exaggerated. 
In  Florence  he  was  so  annoyed  by  beg 
gars  that  he  pretends  to  have  seized  and 
eaten  one  in  a  frantic  spirit  of  revenge. 
There  is,  of  course,  no  truth  in  this.  He 
gives  at  full  length  a  theatrical  programme 
seventeen  or  eighteen  hundred  years  old, 
which  he  professes  to  have  found  in  the 
ruins  of  the  Coliseum  among  the  dirt, 
and  mould  and  rubbish.  It  is  a  sufficient 
comment  upon  this  statement  to  remark 
that  even  a  cast-iron  programme  would 
not  have  lasted  so  long  under  the  cireum- 


His  Life  and  Work. 


stances.  In  Greece  he  plainly  betrays 
both  fright  and  flight  upon  one  occasion, 
but  with  frozen  effrontery  puts  the  latter 
in  this  falsely  tame  form: — 'We  sidled 
towards  the  Piraeus.'  'Sidled/  indeed! 
He  did  iiot  hesitate  to  intimate  that  at 
Ephesus,  when  his  mule  strayed  from  the 
proper  course,  he  got  down,  took  him 
under  his  arm,  carried  him  to  the  road 
again,  pointed  him  right,  remounted,  and 
went  to  sleep  contentedly  till  it  was  time 
to  restore  the  beast  to  the  path  once 
more.  He  states  that  a  growing  youth 
among  his  ship's  passengers  was  in  the 
constant  habit  of  appeasing  his  hunger 
with  soap  and  oakum  between  meals. 
In  Palestine  he  tells  of  ants  that  came 
eleven  miles  to  spend  the  summer  in  the 
desert  and  brought  their  provisions  with 
them;  yet  he  shows  by  his  description  of 
the  country  that  the  feat  was  an  impossi 
bility.  He  mentions,  as  if  it  were  the 
most  common-place  matter,  that  he  cut  a 
Moslem  in  two  in  broad  daylight  in  Jer 
usalem  with  Godfrey  de  Bouillon's  sword, 
and  would  have  shed  more  blood  if  he 


Mark  Twain 


had  had  a  grave-yard  of  his  own.  These 
statements  are  unworthy  a  moment's  at 
tention.  Mr.  Twain  or  any  other 
foreigner  who  did  such  a  thing  in  Jerusa 
lem  would  be  mobbed,  and  would  infalli 
bly  lose  his  life.  But  why  go  on?  Why 
repeat  more  of  his  audacious  and  exasper 
ating  falsehoods?  I«et  us  close  fittingly 
with  this  one:  he  affirms  that  'in  the 
mosque  of  St.  Sophia,  at  Constantinople, 
I  got  my  feet  so  stuck  up  with  a  compli 
cation  of  gurns,  slime,  and  general  im 
punity  that  I  wore  out  more  than  two 
thousand  pair  of  bootjacks  getting  my 
boots  off  that  night,  and  even  then  some 
Christian  hide  peeled  off  with  them/  It 
is  monstrous.  Such  statements  are  simply 
lies — there  is  no  other  name  for  them. 
Will  the  reader  longer  marvel  at  the 
brutal  ignorance  that  pervades  the  Amer 
ican  nation. 

"In  another  place  he  commits  the  bald 
absurdity  of  putting  the  phrase  'tare  an 
ouns'  into  an  Italian  mouth.  In  Rome 
he  unhesitatingly  believes  the  legend 
that  St.  Philip  Neri's  heart  was  so  in-. 


His  Lije  and  Work. 


flamed  with  divine  love  that  it  burst  his 
ribs  —  believes  it  wholly,  because  an 
author  with  a  learned  list  of  university 
degrees  strung  after  his  name  endorses  it 
—  'otherwise,'  says  the  gentle  idiot,  'I 
should  have  felt  a  curiosity  to  know  what 
Philip  had  for  dinner.'  Our  author 
makes  a  long,  fatiguing  journey  to  the 
Grotto  del  Cane,  on  purpose  to  test  its 
poisoning  powers  on  a  dog  —  got  elabor 
ately  ready  for  the  experiment,  and  then 
discovered  that  he  had  no  dog.  A  wiser 
person  would  have  kept  such  a  thing  dis 
creetly  to  himself,  but  with  this  harmless 
creature  everything  comes  out.  He  hurts 
his  foot  in  a  rut  two  thousand  years  old 
in  exhumed  Pompeii,  and  presently, 
when  staring  at  one  of  the  cinder-  like 
corpses  unearthed  in  the  next  square, 
conceives  the  idea  that  maybe  it  is  the 
remains  of  the  ancient  Street  Commis 
sioner,  and  straightway  his  horror  softens 
down  to  a  sort  of  chirpy  contentment 
with  the  condition  of  things. 

"We  have  thus  spoken  freely  of  this 
man's  stupefying  simplicity   and    inno- 


200  Mark  Twain 


cence,  but  we  cannot  deal  similarly  with 
his  colossal  ignorance.  We  do  not  know 
where  to  begin.  And  if  we  knew  where 
to  begin,  we  certainly  should  not  know 
where  to  leave  off.  We  will  give  one 
specimen,  and  one  only.  He  did  not 
know  until  he  got  to  Rome  that  Michael 
Angelo  was  dead!  And  then,  instead  of 
crawling  away  and  hiding  his  shameful 
ignorance  somewhere,  he  proceeds  to  ex 
press  his  pious,  grateful  sort  of  satisfaction 
that  he  is  gone  and  out  of  his  troubles ! 

"No,  the  reader  may  seek  out  the 
author's  exhibitions  of  his  uncultivation 
of  himself.  The  book  is  absolutely  dan 
gerous,  considering  the  magnitude  and 
variety  of  its  misstatements.  And  yet  it 
is  a  text- book  in  the  schools  of  America!  " 

Even  in  our  own  country  *  'Innocents 
Abroad"  had  its  curious  adventures.  In 
Pennsylvania,  a  rural  clergyman  sadly 
returned  the  volume  to  the  book  agent, 
with  the  remark  that  "the  man  who  could 
shed  tears  over  the  tomb  of  Adam,  must 
be  an  idiot." 


His  Life  and  Work.  101 


VI 

MAEEIAGE 


Among  those  cultivated  people  who 
were  passengers  on  the  steamer  Quaker 
City,  in  the  now  memoiable  excursion 
to  the  Holy  Land  in  1867,  were  Judge  J. 
L.  Langdon  and  family  of  Elmira,  New 
York.  A  son  of  Judge  Langdon  figures 
as  "Dan"  in  "Innocents  Abroad."  Miss 
Lizzie,  a  handsome  and  accomplished 
sister  of  Dan,  was  introduced  to  Mark 
Twain  during  the  voyage  outward,  and 
when  the  Quaker  City  sailed  homeward 
Mr.  Clemens  was  paying  deep  attention 
to  the  young  lady.  She  was  somewhat 
of  an  invalid,  and  upon  the  return  of  the 
family  to  Elmira,  her  illness  took  a  more 
serious  form. 


102  Mark  Twain 


Perhaps  the  proximity  of  Buffalo  to 
Eltnira,  the  home  of  his  sweetheart,  oc 
casioned  Mark's  removal  to  the  former 
city  in  the  latter  part  of  1869,  for  at  all 
events  we  find  him  there,  occupying  an 
editorial  position  on  the  Buffalo  Express. 
Subsequently  we  find  him  making  peri 
odical  visits  to  the  neighboring  city  of 
Elmira. 

Miss  L,angdon  was  a  young  lady  of 
position  and  fortune.  Mark  knew  that 
her  father  did  not  look  upon  him  with 
favor,  but  nevertheless  he  acquired  suffi 
cient  courage  to  propose,  and  was  re 
jected,  much  to  his  sorrow. 

"Well,"  he  said  to  the  lady,  "I  didn't 
much  believe  you'd  have  me,  but  I 
thought  I'd  try." 

After  awhile  he  '  'tried"  again  with  the 
same  result,  and  then  he  remarked,  with 
his  celebrated  drawl,  "I  think  a  great 
deal  more  of  you  than  if  you'd  said  'Yes  ; 
but  its  hard  to  bear."  A  third  time  be 
met  with  better  fortune,  and  then  came 
to  the  most  difficult  part  of  his  task,  to 
address  the  old  gentleman. 


His  Life  and  Work.  10$ 

"Judge,"  he  said  to  the  dignified  mil 
lionaire,  "have  you  seen  anything  going 
on  between  Miss  lizzie  and  me  ?  " 

1 '  What  ?  What  ?  "  exclaimed  the  judge 
rather  sharply,  apparently  not  under 
standing  the  situation,  yet  doubtless  get 
ting  a  glimpse  of  it  from  the  inquiry. 

"Have  you  seen  anything  going  on 
between  Miss  Lizzie  and  me  ?  " 

"No,  no,  indeed  !  "  replied  the  mag 
nate  sternly.  "No,  sir;  I  have  not." 

"Well!     Look  sharp  and  you  will." 

The  judge  did  "look  sharp"  after  that 
and  one  day  he  called  the  ardent  and  de 
voted  young  man  into  his  study,  and 
said,  after  some  preamble: 

"Mr.  Clemens,  I  have  something  to 
say  to  you  which  bears  upon  a  subject  of 
great  importance,  at  least  to  me  and 
mine.  You  have  been  coming  here  for 
some  time  and  your  manners  leave  no 
doubt  in  my  mind  as  to  your  object. 
Now,  rny  daughter's  welfare  is  very  dear 
to  me,.,  and  before  I  can  admit  you  to  her 
society  on  the  footing  of  a  suitor  to  her 
hand. I. would  like,  to  know  something 


104  Mark  Twain 


more  than  I  do  about  you,  your  antece 
dents,  etc.  Stop  a  minute !  You  must 
remember  that  a  man  may  be  a  'good 
fellow'  and  a  pleasant  companion  on  a 
voyage  and  all  that,  but  when  it  is  a 
question  as  grave  as  this  a  wise  father 
tries  to  take  every  precaution  before  al 
lowing  his  daughter's  affections  to  be 
come  engaged,  and  I  ask  of  you,  as  a 
gentleman,  that  you  shall  give  me  the 
names  of  some  of  your  friends  in  Califor 
nia  to  whom  I  may  write  and  make  such 
inquiries  as  I  deem  necessary,  that  is,  if 
you  still  desire  our  friendship." 

Mark  put  on  a  bold  front. 

"Sir,"  said  he,  bowing  profoundly,  as 
became  a  young  man  who  respects  his 
hoped-for  father-in-law,  "your  sentiments 
are  in  every  way  correct.  I  approve  of 
them  myself,  and  hasten  to  add  that  you 
have  not  been  mistaken  in  my  senti 
ments  towards  your  daughter,  whom  I 
may  tell  you  candidly  seems  to  me  to  be 
the  most  perfect  of  her  sex,  and  I  honor 
your  solicitation  for  her  welfare.  I  am 
not  only  perfectly  willing  to  ^give  you 


His  Life  and  Work.  105 


reference,  but  am  only  too  glad  to  have 
an  opportunity  to  do  so,  which  iny 
natural  modesty  would  have  prevented 
me  from  offering.  Therefore,  permit  me 
to  give  you  the  names  of  a  few  of  my 
friends.  I  will  write  them  down.  First 
is  Lieutenant  General  John  McComb, 
Alexander  Badlam,  General  L,ander  and 
Col.  W.  H.  L.  Barnes.  They  will  all  He 
for  me  just  as  I  would  for  them  under 
like  circumstances." 

The  prospective  father-in-law  wrote 
letters  of  inquiry  to  several  residents  of 
San  Francisco,  to  whom  Clemens  referred 
him,  and  with  one  exception,  the  letters 
denounced  him  bitterly,  especially  derid 
ing  his  capacity  for  becoming  a  good 
husband.  Mark  sat  beside  his  fiancee 
when  the  letters  were  read  aloud  by  the 
old  gentleman.  There  was  a  dreadful 
silence  for  a  moment,  and  then  Mark 
stammered:  " Well,  that's  pretty  rough 
on  a  fellow,  anyhow?  " 

His  betrothed  came  to  the  rescue  how 
ever,  and  overturned  the  mass  of  testi- 


io6  Mark  Twain 


mony  against  him  by  saying,  'Til  risk 
you,  anyhow." 

So  they  were  married,  the  wedding  oc 
curring  in  the  parlor  of  the  L,angdon 
residence  in  Elmira.  Mark  had  in 
structed  his  friends  in  the  newspaper 
office  at  Buffalo  to  select  him  a  suite  of 
rooms  in  a  first-class  boarding  house  in 
the  city,  and  to  have  a  carriage  at  the 
depot  to  meet  the  bride  and  groom.  Ke 
knew  that  they  would  comply  with  his 
request  and  gave  himself  no  more  anxiety 
about  it. 

When  the  happy  couple  alighted  from 
the  train  at  the  Buffalo  depot,  they  found 
a  handsome  carriage,  a  beautiful  span  of 
horses  and  a  driver  in  livery.  They 
were  driven  to  a  handsome  house,  on  an 
aristocratic  street,  and  as  the  door  was 
opened  there  were  the  parents  of  the 
bride  to  welcome  them  home.  The  old 
folks  had  quietly  arrived  by  a  special 
train. 

After  Mark  had  gone  through  the 
house,  and  admired  its  elegant  furnish 
ings,  he  was  informed  officially  that  he 


His  Life  and  Work.  107 

had  been  driven  by  his  own  coachman, 
in  his  own  carriage,  to  his  own  house. 
They  say  that  the  tears  came  to  his  won 
derfully  dark  and  piercing  eyes,  and  that 
all  he  could  say  was,  ''Well,  this  is  a 
first-class  swindle." 

For  nearly  a  year  Mr  Clemens  was 
editorally  connected  with  the  Buffalo 
Express.  For  this  journal  he  wrote  many 
excellent  sketches,  among  them  "An 
Unburlesqueable  Thing,"  "A  Memory," 
"The  Widow's  Protest,"  "Running  for 
Governor"  and  others. 

The  Reverend  J.  Hyatt  Smith  relates 
an  amusing  anecdote  of  Mark's  life  in 
Buffalo:  "When  I  was  living  in  Buffalo," 
says  Mr.  Smith,  "Mark  Twain  occupied 
a  cottage  across  the  street.  We  did  not 
see  very  much  of  him,  but  one  morning 
as  we  were  enjoying  our  cigars  on  the 
veranda  after  breakfast,  we  saw  Mark 
come  to  his  door  in  his  dressing-gown 
and  slippers,  and  look  over  at  us.  He 
stood  at  his  own  door  and  smoked  for  a 
minute,  as  if  making  up  his  mind  about 
something,  and,  at  last,  opened  his  gate 


Xo8  Mark  Twain 

and  came  lounging  across  the  street. 
There  was  an  unoccupied  rocking-chair 
on  the  veranda,  and  when  my  brother 
offered  it  to  him  he  dropped  into  it  with 
a  sigh  of  relief.  He  smoked  for  a  few 
moments  and  said: 

"Nice  morning." 

"Yes,  very  pleasant." 

4  'Shouldn't  wonder  if  we  had  rain  by 
and  by." 

"Well,  we  could  stand  a  little." 

"This  is  a  nice  house  you  have  here?  " 

"Yes,  we  rather  like  it." 

"How's  your  family  ?  " 

"Quite  well — and  yours  ?  " 

"Oh,  we're  all  comfortable." 

"There  was  another  impressive  silence, 
and  finally  Mark  crossed  his  legs,  blew  a 
puff  of  smoke  in  the  air,  and  in  his  lazy 
drawl,  remarked: 

*I  suppose  you're  a  little  surprised  to 
see  me  over  here  so  early.  Fact  is,  I 
haven't  been  so  neighborly,  perhaps,  as  I 
ought  to  be.  We  must  mend  that  state 
of  things.  But  this  morning  I  came  over 
because  I  thought  you  might  be  inter- 


His  Life  and  Work.  lop 

ested  in  knowing  that  your  roof  is  on 
fire.  It  struck  rne  that  it  would  be  a 
good  idea  if — '  "But  at  the  mention  of 
fire  the  whole  family  hurried  upstairs. 
When  we  had  put  the  fire  out,  and  had 
returned  to  the  veranda,  Mark  wasn't 
there." 

Some  years  later  when  Mr.  Clemens 
was  lecturing  in  Buffalo,  after  being  in 
troduced  to  the  audience,  he  spoke  as 
follows  in  his  low,  drawling,  character 
istic  manner: 

4 'I  notice  many  changes  since  I  was  a 
citizen  of  Buffalo,  fourteen  or  fifteen 
years  ago.  I  miss  the  faces  of  many  old 
friends.  They  have  gone  to  the  tomb — 
to  the  gallows — to  the  White  House, 
Thus  far  the  rest  of  us  have  escaped,  but 
be  sure  our  own  time  is  coming.  Over 
us,  with  awful  certainty,  hangs  one  or 
the  other  of  these  fates.  Therefore,  that 
we  be  secure  against  error,  the  wise 
among  us  will  prepare  for  them  all.  This 
word  of  admonition  may  be  sufficient;  let 
us  pass  to  cheerfuller  things.  I  remem 
ber  one  circumstance  of  by-gone  times 


no  Mark  Twain 

with  great  vividness.  I  arrived  here 
after  dark  on  a  February  evening  in 
1870,  with  my  wile  and  a  large  company 
of  friends,  when  I  had  been  a  husband 
twenty -four  hours,  and  they  put  us  two 
in  a  carriage  and  drove  us  up  and  down, 
and  every  which  way,  through  all  the 
back  streets  in  Buffalo,  until  at  last  I  got 
ashamed  and  said:  'I  asked  Mr.  Slee  to 
get  me  a  cheap  boarding  house,  but  I 
didn't  mean  he  should  stretch  economy 
to  the  going  outside  the  state  to  find  it.' 
The  fact  was  there  was  a  practical  joke 
to  the  fore,  which-  I  didn't  know  any 
thing  about,  and  all  this  fooling  around 
was  to  give  it  time  to  mature.  My 
father-in-law,  the  late  Jervis  L,angdon, 
whom  many  of  you  will  remember,  had 
been  clandestinely  spending  a  fair  fortune 
upon  a  house  and  furniture  in  Delaware 
Avenue  for  us,  and  had  kept  his  secret 
so  well,  that  I  was  the  only  person  this 
side  of  the  Niagara  Falls,  that  hadn't 
found  it  out.  We  reached  the  house  at 
last  about  ten  o'clock  and  were  intro 
duced  to  a  Mrs.  Johnson,  the  ostensible 


Plis  Life  and  Work.  in 

landlady.  I  took  a  glance  around  and 
then  iny  opinion  of  Mr.  Slee's  judgment 
as  a  provider  of  cheap  boarding  houses 
for  men  who  had  to  work  for  their  living 
dropped  to  zero.  I  told  Mrs.  Johnson 
there  had  been  an  unfortunate  mistake, 
that  Mr.  Slee  had  evidently  supposed  I 
had  money,  whereas  I  only  had  talent; 
and  so,  by  her  leave,  we  would  abide 
with  her  a  week,  and  then  she  could 
keep  my  trunk  and  we  would  hunt 
another  place.  Then  the  battalion  of 
ambushed  friends  and  relatives  burst  in 
on  us,  out  of  closets  and  from  behind 
curtains;  the  property  was  delivered  over 
to  us  and  the  joke  revealed.  Such  jokes 
as  these  are  all  too  scarce  in  a  person's 
life.  That  house  was  so  completely 
equipped  in  every  detail — even  to  ser 
vants  and  a  coachman — that  there  was 
nothing  to  do  but  just  sit  down  and  live 
in  it." 

In  the  fall  of  1870,  Mr.  Clemens  re 
signed  his  position  on  the  Buffalo  Express 
and  took  up  his  residence  in  Hartford, 
Connecticut.  He  had  received  several 


Mark  Twain 


large  sums  of  money,  as  royalty  on  his 
"Innocents  Abroad,"  and  this,  together 
with  his  wife's  funds  were  invested  in 
local  corporations,  mostly  insurance  com 
panies.  During  the  winter  following  he 
wrote  "Roughing  It,"  and  early  in  1871, 
the  book  was  published.  The  volume 
awakened  fully  as  much  interest  as  "In 
nocents  Abroad."  It  is  a  humorous 
record  of  his  life  in  the  mining  regions 
and  is  replete  with  adventure,  tragedy 
and  comedy.  * 

The  writing  of  "Roughing  It,"  was 
inspired  according  to  Mark's  confession, 
by  the  stimulating  use  of  tobacco,  a 
luxury  which  he  never  denied  himself 
even  in  his  days  of  poverty.  In  speaking 
upon  this  point,  he  once  said:  "I  began 
smoking  immoderately  when  I  was  eight 
years  old;  that  is,  I  began  with  one  hun 
dred  cigars  a  month,  and  by  the  time  I 
was  twenty  I  had  increased  my  allow 
ance  to  two  hundred  a  month.  Before  I 
was  thirty  I  had  increased  it  to  three 
hundred  a  month.  Once,  when  I  was 
fifteen,  I  ceased  from  smoking  for  three 


His  Life  and  Work. 


months,  but  I  do  not  remember  whether 
the  effect  resulting  was  good  or  evil.  I 
repeated  this  experiment  when  I  was 
twenty  -two;  again  I  do  not  remember 
what  the  result  was.  I  repeated  the  ex 
periment  once  more,  when  I  was  thirty- 
four,  and  ceased  from  smoking  for  a  year 
and  a  half.  My  health  did  not  improve, 
because  it  was  not  possible  tc  improve 
health  that  was  already  perfect.  As  I 
never  permitted  myself  to  regret  this  ab 
stinence,  I  experienced  no  inconvenience 
from  it.  I  wrote  nothing  but  occasional 
magazine  articles  during  pastime,  and  as 
I  never  wrote  one  except  under  strong 
impulse,  I  observed  no  lapse  of  facility. 
But  by  and  by  I  sat  down  with  a  con 
tract  behind  me  to  write  a  book  of  five 
or  six  hundred  pages  —  the  book  called 
''Roughing  It"  —  and  then  I  found  myself 
seriously  obstructed.  I  was  three  weeks 
writing  six  chapters.  Then  I  gave  up 
the  fight,  resumed  my  three  hundred 
cigars,  burned  the  six  chapters,  and 
wrote  the  book  in  three  months  without 
difficulty." 


H4  Mark  Twain 


VII, 
ENGLAND  AND  GEEMAHY. 


In  1872,  Mark  Twain  sailed  for  Eng 
land  to  arrange  for  the  European  publi 
cation  of  his  works  and  successfully  se 
curing  Chatto  and  Windus,  as  his  Eng 
lish  representatives,  and  the  publishing 
house  of  Tauchnitz  at  Leipzig,  as  his 
continental  agent.  Already  he  was 
widely  known  and  quoted  in  England, 
and  was  a  welcome  guest. 

In  speaking  of  his  experience  in  Lon 
don  he  says : 

"During  my  sojourn  in  smoky,  dirty, 
grand  old  London,  I  received  an  invita 
tion  to  attend  a  banquet  there  and  I 
went.  It  was  one  of  those  tremendous 
dinners  where  there  are  eight  hundred  to 
nine  hundred  invited  guests.  I  hadn't 


His  Life  and  Work.  115 

been  used  to  that  sort  of  thing,  and  I 
didn't  feel  quite  at  home.  When  we 
took  our  seats  at  the  table,  I  noticed  that 
at  each  plate  was  a  little  plan  of  the  hall, 
with  the  position  of  each  guest  numbered 
so  that  one  could  see  at  a  glance  where  a 
friend  was  seated  by  learning  the  num 
ber.  Just  before  we  fell  to,  some  one — 
the  lord  mayor,  or  whoever  was  bossing 
the  occasion — arose  and  began  to  read  a 
list  of  those  present — No.  i,  Lord  So-and- 
so;  No.  2,  the  Duke  of  Something  or 
other,  and  so  on.  When  this  individual 
read  the  name  of  some  prominent  politi 
cal  character  or  literary  celebrity,  it 
would  be  greeted  with  more  or  less  ap 
plause.  The  individual  who  was  reading 
the  names  did  so  in  so  monotonous  a 
manner  that  I  became  tired,  and  began 
looking  about  for  something  to  engage 
my  attention.  I  found  the  gentleman 
next  to  me  on  the  right  a  well-informed 
personage,  and  I  entered  into  conversa 
tion  with  him.  I  had  never  seen  him  be 
fore,  but  he  was  a  good  talker  and  en 
joyed  it.  Suddenly,  just  as  he  was 


Xi6  Mark  Twain 


giving  1m  views  upon  the  future  religious 
aspect  of  Great  Britain,  our  ears  were  as 
sailed  by  a  deafening  storm  of  applause. 
Such  a  clapping  of  hands  I  never  heard 
before.  It  sent  the  blood  into  my  head 
with  a  rush,  and  I  got  terribly  excited. 
I  straightened  up  and  commenced  clap 
ping  my  hands  with  all  my  might.  I 
moved  about  in  my  chair  and  clapped 
harder  and  harder.  'Who  is  it  ? '  I  asked 
the  gentleman  on  my  right.  'Whose 
name  did  he  read  ?  '  'Samuel  L,.  Clemens,' 
he  answered.  I  stopped  applauding.  I 
didn't  clap  any  more.  It  kind  of  took 
the  life  out  of  me,  and  I  sat  there  like  a 
mummy,  and  didn't  even  get  up  and 
bow.  It  was  one  of  the  most  distressing 
fixes  I  ever  got  into,  and  it  will  be  many 
a  day  before  I  forget  it." 

Mark  lectured  on  various  occasions  in 
England  with  striking  success.  Rev.  H. 
R.  Haweis,  who  heard  him  at  this  time, 
writes: 

"I  heard  hin  once  at  the  Hanover 
Square  rooms.  The  audience  was  not 
large  nor  very  enthusiastic.  I  believe  he 


His  Life  and  Work.  117 

would  have  been  an  increasing  success 
had  he  stayed  longer.  We  had  not  time 
to  get  accustomed  to  his  peculiar  way, 
and  there  was  nothing  to  take  us  by 
storm.  He  came  on  the  platform  and 
stood  quite  alone.  A  little  table,  with 
the  traditional  water-bottle  and  tumbler, 
was  by  his  side.  His  appearance  was 
not  impressive,  not  very  unlike  the  rep 
resentation  of  him  in  the  various  pictures 
in  his 'Tramp  Abroad.'  He  spoke  more 
slowly  than  any  other  man  I  ever  heard, 
and  did  not  look  at  his  audience  quite 
enough.  I  do  not  think  that  he  felt  al 
together  at  home  with  us,  nor  we  with 
him.  We  never  laughed  loud  or  long. 
We  sat  throughout  expectant  and  on  the 
qui  vive,  very  well  interested  and  gently 
simmering  with  amusement.  With  the 
exception  of  one  exquisite  description  of 
the  old  Magdalen  ivy-covered  collegiate 
buildings  at  Oxford  University,  I  do  not 
think  there  was  one  thing  worth  setting 
down  in  print.  I  got  no  information  out 
of  the  lecture,  and  hardly  a  joke  that 
would  wear,  or  a  story  that  would  bear 


IT 8  Mark  Twain 

repeating.  There  was  a  deal  about  the 
dismal,  lone  silver-land,  the  story  of  the 
Mexican  plug  that  bucked,  and  a  duel 
which  never  came  off  and  another  duel  in 
which  no  one  was  injured;  and  we  sat 
patiently  enough  through  it,  fancying 
that  by  and  by  the  introduction  would  be 
over,  and  the  lecture  would  begin,  when 
Twain  suddenly  made  his  bow  and  went 
off!  It  was  over.  I  looked  at  my  watch 
I  was  never  more  taken  back.  I  had 
been  sitting  there  exactly  an  hour  and 
twenty  minutes!  It  seemed  ten  minutes 
at  the  outside.  If  you  have  ever  tried  to 
address  a  public  meeting,  you  will  know 
what  this  means.  It  means  that  Mark 
Twain  is  a  consummate  public  speaker. 
If  ever  he  chose  to  say  anything,  he  would 
say  it  marvelously  well;  but  in  the  art  of 
saying  nothing  in  an  hour,  he  surpasses 
our  most  accomplished  parliamentary 
speakers." 

Mr.  Clemens  relates,  as  one  of  the 
most  harrowing  experiences  of  his  life,  a 
six  hours'  ride  across  England,  his  fellow 
traveler  an  Englishman,  who,  shortly 


His  Life  and  Work.  119 

after  they  started,  drew  forth  the  nrst 
volume  of  the  English  edition  of  "Inno 
cents  Abroad''  from  his  pocket,  and 
calmly  perused  it  from  beginning  to  end 
without  a  smile.  Then  he  drew  forth 
the  second  volume  and  read  it  as  solemnly 
as  the  first.  Mark  says  he  thought  he 
should  die,  yet  John  Bull  was  probably 
enjoying  it  alter  his  own  undemonstra 
tive  style. 

Upon  his  return  from  England  in  1873, 
in  conjunction  with  Charles  Dudley 
Warner,  Mark  Twain  issued  his  fourth 
book,  "The  Gilded  Age,"  which  met 
with  remarkable  sale  in  this  country  and 
in  Europe. 

In  1876,  there  appeared  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  that  famous  fragment,  '  'Punch 
Brothers,  Punch  with  care."  It  had  a 
curious  origin.  Early  in  April,  1875,  the 
city  line  of  the  New  York  and  Harlem 
railroad  company  having  adoped  the 
punch  system,  posted  in  the  panels  of 
their  cars  a  card  of  information  and  in 
struction  to  conductors  and  passengers, 
both  of  whom  were  indirectly  requested 


I2O  Mark  Twain 


to  watch  the  other.  It  read  as  follows: 
The  CONDUCTOR,  when  he  receives  a 
Fare,  must  immediately  PUNCH  in  the 
presence  of  the  passenger, 
A  BLUE  Trip  Slip  for  an  8  Cents  Fare, 
A  BUFF  Trip  Slip  for  a  6  Cents  Fare, 
A  PINK  Trip  Slip  for  a  3  Cents  Fare, 
FOR  COUPON  AND  TRANSFER  TICKETS, 

PUNCH  THE  TICKETS. 
The  poesy  of  the  thing  was  discovered 
almost  as  "immediately"  as  the  conduc 
tor  "immediately"  punched  and  all  sorts 
of  jingles  were  accommodated  to  the 
measure.  In  September  the  first  poem 
appeared  in  print  and  various  versions 
appeared  in  the  New  York  and  Boston 
newspapers. 

In  the  January,  1876,  Atlantic,    Mark 
Twain's  "Literary  Nightmare"   appeared 
with  the  following  version: 
'' Conductor,  when  you  receive  a  fare, 
Punch  in  the  presence  of  the  passenjare  ! 
A  blue  trip  slip  for  an  eight-cent  fare, 
A  buff  trip  slip  for  a  six-cent  fare, 
A  pink  trip  slip  for  a  three-cent  fare; 
Punch  in  the  presence  of  the  passenjare ! 


His  Life  and  Work.  121 

CHORUS. 

Punch,  brothers,  punch  with  care! 
Punch  in  the  presence  of  the  passenjare  ! 
Said  Mark:  "I  came  across  these  jing 
ling  rhymes  in  a  newspaper,  a  little  while 
ago,  and  read  them  a  couple  of  times. 
They  took  instant  and  entire  possession 
of  me.  All  through  breakfast  they  went 
waltzing  through  my  brain,  and  when,  at 
last,  I  rolled  up  my  napkin,  I  could  not 
tell  whether  I  had  eaten  anything  or  not. 
I  had  carefully  laid  out  my  day's  work 
the  day  before — a  thrilling  tragedy  in  the 
novel  which  I  am  writing.  I  went  to 
my  den  to  begin  my  deed  of  blood.  I 
took  up  my  pen,  but  all  I  coulcl  get  it  to 
say  was,  "Punch  in  the  presence  of  the 
passenjare."  I  fought  hard  for  an  hour, 
but  it  was  useless.  My  head  kept  hum 
ming,  "A  blue  trip  slip  for  an  eight-cent 
fare,  a  buff  trip  slip  for  a  six-cent  fare," 
and  so  on  and  so  on,  without  peace  or 
respite.  The  day's  work  was  ruined — I 
could  see  that  plainly  enough.  I  gave 
up  and  drifted  down  town,  and  presently 
discovered  that  my  feet  were  keeping 


122  Mark  Twain 


time  to  that  relentless  jingle.  When  I 
could  stand  it  no  longer  I  altered  my 
step.  But  it  did  no  good;  those  rhymes 
accommodated  themselves  to  the  new 
step  and  went  on  harassing  me  just  as 
before.  I  returned  home  and  suffered  all 
the  afternoon;  suffered  all  through  an 
unconscious  and  unrefreshing  dinner; 
suffered,  and  cried,  and  jingled  all 
through  the  evening;  went  to  bed  and 
rolled,  tossed  and  jingled  right  along  the 
same  as  ever;  got  up  at  midnight  frantic, 
and  tried  to  read;  but  there  was  nothing 
visible  upon  the  whirling  page  except 
"Punch!  punch  in  the  presence  of  the 
passanjare."  By  sunrise  I  was  out  of  my 
mind,  and  everybody  marvelled  and  was 
distressed  at  the  idiotic  burden  of  my 
ravings. — " 

Tlie  Literary  Nightmare  awakened 
horse  car-poets  throughout  the  world. 
Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  in  La  Revue 
des  Duex  Mondes,  had  a  brief  copy  of 
French  verses,  written  with  all  his  well- 
known  warmth  and  melody. 


His  Life  and  Work. 


LK  CHANT  DU  CONDUCTKUR. 

Ayant  ete  paye  le  conducteur 
Percera  en  pleine  vue  du  voyageur, 
Quand  il  rocoit  trois  sous  un  coupon 

vert, 
Un  coupon  jatme  pour  six  sous  c'est 

1'  affaire, 
Et  pour  huit   sous  c'est  un  coupon 

couleur, 
De-rose,  en  pleine  vue  du  voyageur. 


Done,  percezsoigneusement,  mes  freres, 
Tout  en  pleine  vue  des  voyageurs,  etc. 
The  Western,  an  enterprising  St.  Louis 
magazine,  had  a  terrible  attack,  and  ad 
dressing  "Marco  Twain"  it  came  out  in  a 
Latin  anthem,  with  the  following  chorus: 
Pungite,  fratres,  pungite, 
Pungite  cum  arnore 
Pungite  pro  vectore 
Diligentissime  pungite. 
A  man  who  had  just  been  reading  the 
"Literary   Nightmare,"   said   The  Austin 
(Nev.)  Reveille,  stepped  in  to  a  Main  street 
saloon    muttering,     "Punch,     brothers  ! 
punch  with  care  !  punch  in  the  presence 


124  Mark  Twain 


of  the  passenjare  !  "  when  a  retired  prize 
fighter  who  was  snoozing  in  a  corner  got 
up,  and  accosting  the  nightmare  fellow, 
demanded,  " Whose  ears  are  you  going 
to  punch,  you  bloody  duffer? "  The 
other  fellow  tried  to  explain,  but  the 
fighter  insisted  that  he  (the  other  fellow) 
had  said  " Punch,  brothers  !  punch  with 
care!  punch  that  big  feller  square  in  the 
earl" 

The    Bridgeport     Standard    man    said: 
"Mark  Twain   will  sail   for  Europe   on 
business  in  the  spring;  but 
If  he  plays  any  jokes  on  the  captain  there, 
And  don't  come  down   with  the  reg'ler 

fare, 

The  captain'll  probably  rip  and  tear, 
And  punch  him  in   the  presence   of  the 
passenjare." 

When  "The  Adventures  of  Tom 
Sawyer"  appeared  in  1876,  the  fame  of 
Mark  Twain  was  universal.  In  this  vol 
ume  he  revealed  the  story  of  his  boyhood 
days  on  the  Mississippi,  and  his  pranks 
and  adventures  in  the  town  of  Hannibal. 
It  was  published  as  a  book  for  boys,  and 


HisrLife~dnd  Work.  125 

commanded  an  enormous  sale,  edition 
alter  edition  being  exhausted.  In  fact, 
"Tom  Sawyer"  sold  better  than  any  of 
his  books,  excepting  "Innocents  Abroad." 
In  the  meanwhile,  "The  Gilded  Age" 
had  been  dramatized  and  the  production 
of  the  comedy  on  the  American  stage 
netted  the  author  large  sums  of  money. 
"Injin  Jo"  one  of  the  principal  charac 
ters  in  "Tom  Sawyer"  still  lives  at  Han 
nibal,  Mo. ,  and  is  one  of  the  noted  indi 
viduals  of  the  town.  He  drives  an  old 
white  horse  and  a  red  express  wagon, 
borne  down  on  one  side  from  long  and 
hard  service.  Jo  hauls  trunks  from  the 
depot  and  chores  around  with  his  horse 
and  wagon.  He  loves  a  dollar  more  than 
anybody  else  in  the  town,  and  out  of  his 
meagre  earnings  he  has  accumulated  quite 
a  fortune.  He  owns  twelve  tenement 
houses  in  Hannibal,  ranging  in  value  from 
$500  to  $  1,000  each  yet  from  the  clothes 
that  he  wears  one  would  naturally  think 
that  he  would  be  constantly  in  dread  of 
the  ragman  coming  along  and  casting  him 
into  a  sack  of  old  iron  and  rags. 


126  Mark  Twain 


A  well-known' literary  critic  in  review 
ing  "Tom  Sawyer/'  said:  "This  literary 
wag  has  performed  some  services  which 
entitle  him  to  the  gratitude  of  his  genera 
tion.  ,  He  has  run  the  traditional  Sunday- 
school  boy  through  his  literary  mangle 
and  turned  him  out  washed  and  ironed 
into  a  proper  state  of  flatness  and  col 
lapse.  That  whining,  canting,  early- 
dying,  anaemic  creature  was  the  nau 
seating  model  held  up  to  the  full-blooded 
mischievous  lads  of  by-gone  years  as 
worthy  of  their  imitation.  He  poured 
his  religious  hypocrisy  over  every  honest 
pleasure  a  boy  had.  He  whined  his 
lachrymose  warnings  on  every  play 
ground.  He  vexed  their  lives.  So, 
when  Mark  grew  old  enough,  he  went 
gunning  for  him,  and  lo,  wherever  his 
soul  may  be,  the  skin  of  the  strumous 
young  pietist  is  now  neatly  tacked  up  to 
view  on  the  Sunday-school  door  of  to-day 
as  a  warning,  and  the  lads  of  to-day  see 
no  particular  charm  in  a  priggish,  hy- 
dropathical  existence.  ' 

In  1877  appeared  a  volume  of  his  com- 


His  Life  and  Work.  12? 


plete   sketches,  which   included   most  of 
his  fugitive  newspaper  articles. 

In  the  following  year,  April  n,  1878, 
he  sailed  for  Europe  in  the  steamship 
Holsatia.  He  was  accompanied  by  his 
family,  and  after  traveling  in  England, 
France  and  Switzerland,  settled  down  to 
spend  the  summer  in  Germany.  Here 
he  obtained  the  materials  for  his  famous 
book,  "A  Tramp  Abroad."  In  this 
volume  "  Harris"  guide  and  courier,  is 
introduced  to  the  reader.  Harris  is  not 
only  invited  to  bow  promiscuously  but  is 
set  on  to  talk  to  doubtful  people,  to  en 
tertain  bores,  and  generally  to  be  the 
butt  of  einbarassing  situations.  Mr. 
Clemens  made  a  minute  study  of  the 
Germans,  their  manners,  habits,  tastes 
and  amusements.  We  all  remember  his 
treatment  of  the  cases  and  gender  in  the 
German  grammar: 

guten  Freunak,  Mein^  gut<?# 
Mein^z  guien  Freund^w,  and 
den  and  dem  until  one  feels  one  might 
better  go  without  friends  in  Germany 
than  take  all  this  trouble  about  them. 


128  Mark  Twain 

'What  a  bother,'  he  cries,  'it  is  to  decline 
a  good  male  ! '     But   that   is   nothing  to 
the   trouble   we   are    landed   in   by   the 
female  !     Every  man  has   a   gender  and 
there  is  no  sense  or  system  in   the  distri 
bution.     In  German  a  young  lady  has  no 
sex,  while  a  turnip  has.     Thus   you  say: 
"Wilhelm,  where  is  the  turnip  ?' 
"  'She  has  gone  to  the  kitchen/ 
"'  Where   is    the  accomplished   young 
lady  ? ' 

"  'It  has  gone  to  the  opera  !  " 
Still  better  were  his  illustrations  of  the 
German  fish  wife.  His  argument  with  a 
raven,  his  adventures  with  a  blue  jay  and 
his  perilous  journey  on  the  river  rail, 
were  afterward  exquisitely  described  in 
"A  Tramp  Abroad,"  published  in  1880. 
While  on  his  return  from  Germany,  he 
tarried  in  London  and  Glasgow,  and 
while  in  the  latter  city  was  elected  a 
member  of  the  Scottish  Society  of  Litera 
ture  and  Art. 


His  Life  and  Work.  129 

VIII, 
HIS  LATER  WOKKS, 


On  September  3,  1879,  Mr.  Clemens 
and  his  family  arrived  in  New  York  on 
the  steamship  Galbier,  having  been 
abroad  for  a  period  ot  sixteen  months. 

"There,"  said  Mark,  to  a  friend,  as  the 
ship  left  quarantine  and  began  her 
journey  up  the  bay,  "the  danger  is  finally 
passed.  When  the  ship  begins  to  roll 
sideways  and  kick  up  behind  at  the  satne 
time,  I  always  know  I  am  expected  to 
perform  a  certain  duty.  I  learned  it 
years  ago  on  the  Quaker  City.  You  might 
suppose  that  I  would  have  forgotten  my 
part  after  so  long  a  residence  on  shore. 
But  there  it  is  again.  It's  habit;  every 
thing  connected  with  the  sea  comes  down 
to  a  matter  of  habit.  You  might  confine 
me  for  forty  years  in  a  Rhode  Island  corn 


JJO  Mark  Twain 


patch,  and  at  the  end  of  that  time  I'd 
know  just  as  well  what  to  do  when  a  ship 
begins  to  kick  as  I  do  at  this  moment. 
The  darkest  night  never  confuses  me  in 
the  least.  It's  a  little  singular  when  you 
look  at  it,  isn't  it?  But  I  presume  it's 
attributable  to  the  solemn  steadfastness 
of  the  great  deep." 

As  a  conscientious  Republican  in  his 
political  preferences,  Mr.  Clemens  took 
an  active  interest  in  the  Presidential 
campaign  of  1880.  While  visiting  in 
Elmira,  New  York,  in  the  fall  of  that 
year,  he  made  a  short  speech  one  Satur 
day  night,  introducing  to  a  Republican 
meeting  General  Ilawley  of  Connecticut. 
In  the  course  of  his  remarks  Mr.  Clemens 
said: 

"General  Hawley  is  a  member  of  my 
church  at  Hartford,  and  the  author  of 
'Beautiful  Snow.'  May  be  he  will  deny 
that.  But  I  am  only  here  to  give  him  a 
character  from  his  last  place.  As  a  pure 
citizen,  I  respect  him;  as  a  personal 
friend  of  years,  I  have  the  warmest  re 
gard  for  him;  as  a  neighbor,  whose  vege- 


His  Life  and  Work.  131 

table  garden  adjoins  mine,  why — why,  I 
watch  him.  As  the  author  of  'Beautiful 
Snow/  he  has  added  a  new  pang  to 
winter.  He  is  a  square,  true  man  in 
honest  politics,  and  I  must  say  he  occu" 
pies  a  mighty  lonesome  position.  So 
broad,  so  bountiful  is  his  character  that 
he  never  turned  a  tramp  empty-handed 
from  his  door,  but  always  gave  him  a 
letter  of  introduction  to  me.  Pure, 
honest,  incorruptible,  that  is  Joe  Hawley. 
Such  a  man  in  politics  is  like  a  bottle  of 
perfumery  in  a  glue  factory — it  may  mod 
ify  the  stench  but  it  doesn't  destroy  it. 
I  haven't  said  any  more  of  him  than  I 
would  say  of  myself.  Ladies  and  gentle 
men,  this  is  General  Hawley." 

In  November,  1880,  a  Charity  Fair  was 
in  progress  in  Buffalo,  and  during  its 
course  a  small  journal,  called  the  Bazaar 
Bulletin ,  was  published.  In  one  number 
of  this  paper  appeared  a  contribution  from 
the  pen  of  Mark  Twain,  entitled: 

"A   TALK   FOR   STRUGGLING   YOUNG 
POETS." 

"Well,  sir,  there  was  a  young  fellow 


Mark  Twain 


who  believed  that  he  was  a  poet;  but  the 
main  difficulty  with  him  was  to  get  any 
body  else  to  believe  it.  Many  and  many 
a  poet  has  split  on  that  rock — if  it  is  a 
rock.  Many  and  many  a  poet  will  split 
on  it,  thank  God.  The  young  fellow  I 
speak  of,  used  all  the  customary  devices 
— and  with  the  customary  results — to  wit: 
he  competed  for  prizes,  and  didn't  take 
any;  he  sent  specimens  of  poetry  to 
famous  people,  and  asked  for  a  'candid 
opinion/  meaning  a  puff,  and  didn't  get 
it;  he  took  advantage  of  dead  persons 
and  obituaried  them  in  ostensible  poetry, 
but  it  made  him  no  friends — certainly 
none  among  the  dead.  But  at  last  he 
heard  of  another  chance;  there  was  going 
to  be  a  fair  in  Buffalo,  accompanied  by 
the  usual  inoffensive  paper,  and  the  editor 
of  that  paper  offered  a  prize  of  $10  for  the 
best  original  poem  on  the  usual  topic  of 
Spring,  no  poem  to  be  considered  unless 
it  should  possess  positive  value. 

"Well,  sir,  he  shook  up  his  muse,  he 
introduced  into  her  a  rousing  charge  of 
information  from  his  jug,  and  then  sat 


His  Life  and  Work. 


down  and  dashed  off  the  following  rnad- 
rigal  just  as  easy  as  lying: 

HAIL!  BEAUTIOUS,  GLADSOME  SPRING. 

A  POEM  BY  S.  L.  CLEMENS. 

No.  1163.    Hartford,  Conn.,  Nov.  17. 
GEO.  P.  BIS3ELL  &  CO., 

BANKERS, 

Pay  to  Mrs.  David  Gray,  or  Order,  for  F 
TEN  ........................  DOLLARS. 

Household  Account. 

S.  L.  CLEMENS. 

4  'Did  he  take  the  prize?  Yes,  he  took 
the  prize.  The  poem  and  its  title  didn't 
seem  to  go  together  very  well;  but,  no 
matter,  that  sort  of  thing  has  happened 
before;  it  didn't  rhyme,  neither  was  it 
blank  verse,  for  the  blanks  were  all  filled, 
yet  it  took  the  prize  for  this  reason,  no 
other  poem  offered  was  really  worth  more 
than  $4.50,  whereas  there  was  no  getting 
around  the  petrified  fact  that  this  one  was 
worth  $10.  In  truth  there  was  not  a 
banker  in  the  whole  town  who  was  will 
ing  to  invest  a  cent  in  those  other  poems, 
but  every  one  of  them  said  this  one  was 
good,  sound,  seaworthy  poetry,  and  worth 
its  face.  Such  is  the  way  in  which  that 
struggling  young  poet  achieved  recogni- 


134  Mark  Twain 


tion  at  last,  and  got  a  start  along  the 
road  that  leads  to  lyric  eminence — what 
ever  that  may  mean.  Therefore,  let 
other  struggling  young  poets  be  encour 
aged  by  this  to  go  striving. 

"MARK  TWAIN." 

Not  long  after  this,  Mr.  Clemens  acted 
as  auctioneer  at  the  last  sale  at  a  bazaar 
or  fair  held  in  Hartford.  In  opening  the 
sale  he  said:  "Well,  now,  after  a  week 
of  work  by  these  ladies,  who  have 
handled  an  immense  amount  of  money 
without  putting  a  penny  into  their  private 
pockets,  I,  their  mere  clerk,  propose,  as 
clerks  will  sometimes,  to  'knock  dow  \' 
something." 

It  was  at  this  time  that  the  humorist 
wrote  a  letter  to  a  friend  in  Tennessee, 
expressing  his  admiration  for  Artemus 
Ward,  as  follows: 

"DEAR  SIR: — One  of  the  first  questions 
which  Londoners  ask  me  is  whether  I  knew 
Artemus  Ward;  the  answer  'yes/  makes 
them  my  friends  on  the  spot.  Arte 
mus  seems  to  have  been  on  the  warmest 
terms  with  thousands  of  those  people. 


His  Life  and  Work. 


Well,  he  seems  never  to  have  written  a 
harsh  thing  against  anybody  —  neither 
have  I,  for  that  matter,  at  least  nothing 
harsh  enough  for  a  body  to  fret  about  — 
and  I  think  he  never  felt  bitter  toward 
people.  There  may  have  been  three  or 
four  other  people  like  that  in  the  world 
at  one  time  or  another,  but  they  probably 
died  a  good  while  ago.  I  think  his  lec 
ture  on  the  'Babes  in  the  Woods/  was 
the  funniest  thing  I  ever  listened  to. 
Arternus  once  said  to  me  gravely,  almost 
sadly  : 

"  'Clemens,  I  have  done  too  much 
fooling,  too  much  trifling;  I  am  going  to 
write  something  that  will  live/ 

"  'Well,  what  for  instance?' 

<(In  the  same  grave  way  he  said: 

(<  'A  lie/ 

''It  was  an  admirable  surprise.  I  was 
just  getting  ready  to  cry;  he  was  becom 
ing  pathetic.  *  *  *  " 

Yours  truly, 
S.  L.  CI^MKNS. 

In  1882,  Mr.  Clemens  wrote  "The 
Stolen  White  Elephant,"  and  the  same 


Ij6  Mark  Twain 


year  visited  Bermuda.  The  following 
winter  James  R.  Osgood  and  Company,  of 
Boston,  issued  "The  Stolen  White  Ele 
phant,"  with  which  were  incorporated 
"Some  Rambling  Notes  of  an  Idle  Ex 
cursion,"  "Punch,  Brother,  Punch,"  and 
other  sketches. 

About  this  time  the  humorist  was 
asked  to  contribute  to  the  Bartholdi  Ped 
estal  Fund.  Here  was  his  response: 

"You  know  my  weakness  for  Adam, 
and  you  know  how  I  have  struggled  to 
get  him  a  monument  and  failed.  Now, 
it  seems  to  me,  here  is  my  chance. 
What  do  we  care  for  a  statue  of  liberty 
when  we've  got  the  thing  itself  in  its 
wildest  sublimity?  What  you  want  of  a 
monument  is  to  keep  you  in  mind  of 
something  you  haven't  got — something 
you've  lost.  Very  well,  we  haven't  lost 
liberty;  we've  lost  Adam.  *  *  * 
Look  at  Adam,  what  have  we  done  for 
Adam?  What  has  Adam  done  for  us? 
He  gave  us  life,  he  gave  us  death,  he 
gave  us  heaven,  he  gave  us  hell.  *  *  * 
With  trifling  alteration,  this  present 


His  Life  and  Work. 


statue  will  answer  very  well  for  Adam. 
You  can  turn  that  blanket  into  an  ulster; 
part  the  hair  on  one  side,  or  conceal  the 
sex  of  his  head  with  a  fire-helmet,  and  at 
once  he's  a  man;  put  a  harp  and  a  halo 
and  a  palm  branch  in  the  left  hand  to 
symbolize  a  part  of  what  Adam  did  for 
us,  and  leave  the  fire  basket  just  where 
it  is  to  symbolize  the  rust.  My  friends, 
the  father  of  life  and  death  and  taxes  has 
been  neglected  long  enough.  Is  it  but  a 
question  of  finance?  Behold  the  enclosed 
(paid  bank)  checks.  Use  them  as  freely 
as  they  are  freely  contributed.  Heavens 
knows  I  would  there  were  a  ton  of  them. 
I  would  send  them  all  to  you,  for  my 
heart  is  in  this  sublime  work. 

"S.  I,.  C." 

In  1882,  while  Mark  Twain  was  col 
lecting  retrospective  material  for  his  "L/ife 
on  the  Mississippi,"  he  stopped,  one  day, 
at  Arkansaw  City.  He  had,  years  be 
fore,  known  the  place  as  Campbeirs 
Bend,  and  naturally,  had  a  desire  to  poke 
about  unattended  by  persons  who  would 
be  likely  to  break  in  upon  his  musings; 


Mark  Twain 


so,  avoiding  the  committee  that  had  been 
appointed  to  receive  him,  he  wandered 
off  into  the  woods.  He  thought  nothing 
of  the  distance  he  was  traversing.  There 
was  music  among  the  tree  tops,  and 
flowers,  rich  in  deep  coloring,  perfumed 
the  air.  After  a  long  walk  he  came  to  a 
cabin,  and,  upon  entering,  found  an  old 
and  tangle-bearded  man  sitting  near  the 
empty  fireplace.  The  old  fellow  glanced 
at  Twain,  and  then,  springing  between 
the  visitor  and  the  door,  snatched  down 
a  gun,  cocked  it  and  said: 

"So  I've  got  you,  have  I?" 

"I  don't  understand  you!"  Twain 
gasped. 

"Oh,  no,  I  reckon  not.  Er  man  never 
understands  a  thing  when  he  don't 
want'er.  Didn't  stop  your  steamboat 
down  yander  below  the  bend  the  other 
day  an'  steal  sixty  sheep  that  belonged 
to  me,  did  you?" 

1<I  will  swear  upon  the  honor  of  a 
gentleman  that  I  did  not.  I  haven't  been 
in  this  neighborhood  before  in  twenty 
years." 


His  Life  and  Work. 


"Set  down  tkar."  Twain  obeyed. 
The  old  man  continued:  "It  mout  have 
been  have  been  a  good  while  sense  you 
was  here  before  the  other  day,  but  you 
got  here  just  in  time  ter  steal  them  sheep 
an'  I'm  goin'  ter  have  your  skelp.  Hear 
me?" 

"My  dear  sir,  you  are  laboring  under 
a  frightful  mistake.  I  never  owned  a 
sheep  in  my  life  -  " 

"No,  I  don't  reckon  you  ever  did  own 
one  an'  mo'n  that,  nobody  else  ain't  apt 
to  own  nary  one  whar  you  hang  out. 
Yas,  sah,  come  right  here  an'  tuck  my 
sheep  an'  ermong  'em  wuz  cr  pet  lamb 
that  my  little  gran'daughter  loves  better'n 
she  does  her  life  an'  she  hain't  slep'  er 
wink  sense  fur  cryin'  about  it.  Oh,  you 
needn't  blink,  fur  I  am  goin'  ter  hold  you 
here  till  my  little  gal  comes  an'  then  I'm 
goin'  to  blow  yo'  head  off.  It  won't  be 
long  'fo'  she  comes  an'  ef  you've  got  any 
pra'rs  that  you  reckon  oughter  be  said, 
why  you  better  say  'em,  that's  all." 

"My  dear  sir—  " 


Mark  Twain 


"Don't  'dear  sir'  me.  I've  got  you,  an' 
I'm  going  ter  use  you." 

1  'But  how  do  you  know  that  I  stole 
your  sheep?" 

"You  know  how  I  know  it.  You 
know  that  jest  ez  soon  ez  you  seed  me  er 
comin'  you  shoved  off,  an1  mo'n  that,  you 
know  that  when  I  jumped  in  a  canoe  an' 
started  to  paddle  out  ter  you,  w'y,  you 
shot  at  me.  You  know  all  that  well 
enough." 

*  'Merciful  heavens !"  Twain  exclaimed. 

"Yas,  sah,  yas;  that's  erbout  whut  I 
'lowed,  but  the  boat  puffed  on  away." 

A  stick  snapped  outside.  "Great 
heavens!"  Twain  thought,  "is  the  girl 
coming?"  No,  it  was  only  a  calf.  The 
expression  on  the  old  fellow's  face  grew 
harder.  There  was  a  cruel  twitching 
about  the  corners  of  his  mouth. 

"Oh,  don't  you  fret,  she'll  be  here 
d'reckly." 

"My  friend, "said  Twain,  with  an  effort 
to  be  calm,  "if  you  will  go  with  me  over 
to  Arkansaw  City  I  will  prove  to  you 
that  I  would  not  steal  a  sheep." 


His  Life  and  Work.  141 

"I  don't  want  no  proof  that  comes 
frum  that  place.  You'd  tell  a  lie,  an' 
them  fellers  over  thar  would  sw'ar  ter  it. 
I  see  my  little  gal  comin'  through  yander. 
Ez  I  said  jest  now,  ef  you've  got  any 
pra'rs  you  want  said,  w'y,  I  reckon  you 
better  say  'em." 

4  'Would  you  commit  murder?" 

"  Would  you  steal  sheep?" 

4 'Surely  not." 

c<Ah,  hah,  an*  sholy  I  wouldn't  be  com- 
mittin'  murder  by  killin'  sich  er  feller  ez 
you  air.  Don't  move  now,  fur  ef  you  do 
I'll  drap  you.  Come,  quick,  now,  befo' 
the  gal  comes,  tell  me  ef  you  know  who 
did  steal  them  sheep,  that  is,  if  you  didn't." 

*  'I  think  I  do,"  Twain  quickly  rejoined, 
and  then,  remembering  the  name  of  a 
steamboat  engineer  whom  he  had  known 
before  the  war,  he  added:  "Jo  Billings 
stole  your  sheep." 

The  old  fellow  looked  sharply  at  him, 
and  replied: 

"Air  you  shore?" 

"I  am  certain." 

"Was  you  on  his  boat  at  the  time?" 


142  Mark  Twain 

"Yes,  and  tried  to  keep  him  from 
stealing  them,  but  could  not." 

"Will  you  help  me  find  him?" 

"Yes." 

"Wall,  then,  scoot.  Quick,  befo'  the 
gal  comes." 

When  Twain  reached  Arkansaw  City, 
he  found  the  perplexed  and  disappointed 
committee.  He  was  nervous  and  de 
pressed.  While  he  was  standing  in  the 
office  of  the  hotel,  some  one  said: 

"Mr.  Clemens,  you  used  to  know  Jo 
Billings,  didn't  you?" 

Twain  felt  an  uneasiness  crawling  over 
him.  "Yes,"  he  replied. 

"There  he  is." 

Twain  looked  around  and  started. 
The  old  fellow  who  had  held  him  in  the 
cabin  came  forward,  snorted,  and  then  said : 

"Sam,  I  oughter  shot  you  fur  not 
knowin'  me,  but  I  reckon  I've  changed 
some.  Sheep,  w'y,  I  never  had  one  in 
my  life.  Haw,  haw!  Come,  fellers, 
here's  to  Sam  an'  his  erbility  ter  still 
hedge  on  the  truth." 

"Life  on  the  Mississippi,"  appeared  in 


His  Ltfe  and  Work.  143 

1883.  It  was  a  volume  of  reminiscences 
of  his  youthful  days  as  a  steamboat  pilot 
on  the  father  of  waters.  This  volume 
was  followed  in  1885  by  "The  Prince  and 
the  Pauper,"  which  was  a  remarkable 
performance  and  a  surprise  even  to  the 
friends  of  Mr.  Clemens.  For  many  years 
he  had  been  a  conscientious  and  untiring 
student  of  language,  literature,  history, 
not  merely  making  up  for  deficiencies  of 
early  education,  but  laying  solid  founda 
tions  and  building  on  them  a  broad  and 
liberal  culture,  which  made  him  a  man 
of  letters  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term. 
His  thorough  knowledge  of  English  and 
American  literature  is  supplemented  by 
a  knowledge  of  that  of  various  other  lan 
guages,  of  which  he  has  acquired  a 
thorough  command.  The  story  of  '  'The 
Prince  and  the  Pauper,"  for  instance,  re 
veals  somewhat  the  extent  and  fidelity  of 
his  study  of  early  England,  and  is  a  story 
that,  at  the  beginning  of  his  career,  he 
could  neither  have  thought  out  or  appre 
ciated,  and  yet  it  is  very  distinctively 


Mark  Twain 


marked  with  his  peculiar  native  genius 
and  humor. 

"The  Adventures  of  Huckleberry  Finn" 
were  published  in  1886.  The  manu 
script  was  completed  many  months 
before  the  book  appeared,  owing  to  com 
plications  and  differences  with  the  pub 
lishers,  and  was  finally  published  by  Mr. 
Clemens  himself.  In  this  book  Mark 
Twain  was  at  his  best.  The  London 
Athenaum  in  reviewing  the  work,  said: 
"It  is  such  a  book  as  he,  and  he  only, 
could  have  written.  It  is  meant  for  boys; 
but  there  are  few  men  (we  should  hope) 
who,  once  they  take  it  up,  will  not  delight 
in  it.  It  forms  a  companion  or  sequel  to 
'Tom  Sawyer.'  Huckleberry  Finn,  as 
everybody  knows,  is  one  of  Tom's  closest 
friends;  and  the  present  volume  is  a 
record  of  the  adventures  which  befell  him 
soon  after  the  event  which  made  him  a 
parson  of  property  and  brought  Tom 
Sawyer's  story  to  a  becoming  conclusion. 
They  are  of  the  most  surprising  and  de 
lightful  kind  imaginable,  and  in  the  course 
of  them  we  fall  in  with  a  number  of  types 


His  Life  and  Work.  145 

of  character  of  singular  freshness  and 
novelty,  besides  being  schooled  in  half  a 
dozen  extraordinary  dialects.  .  .  .  We 
shall  content  ourselves  with  repeating 
that  the  book  is  Mark  Twain  at  his  best, 
and  remarking  that  Jim  and  Huckleberry 
are  real  creations,  and  the  worthy  peers 
of  the  illustrious  Torn  Sawyer." 

I,ater  appeared  UA  Connecticut  Yankee 
in  King  Authur's  Court,"  and  other 
volumes.  In  all  of  his  books  there  is 
common  sense,  and  love  of  justice,  and 
hatred  of  cant,  and  a  vein  of  serious 
earnestness,  even  in  his  most  comical 
writings,  that  will  for  all  time  make  him 
near  to  the  people.  As  the  lyondon 
Daily  News  once  said  of  him: 

"His  gravity  in  narrating  the  most  pre 
posterous  tale,  his  sympathy  with  every 
one  of  his  absurdest  characters,  his  mi 
croscopic  imagination,  his  vein  of  serious 
ness,  his  contrasts  of  pathos,  his  bursts 
of  indignant  plain  speaking  about  certain 
national  errors,  make  Mark  Twain  an 
author  of  the  highest  merit,  and  far  re 
mote  from  the  mere  buffoon." 


146  Mark  Twain 


IX, 
THE  LECTUEE  PLATFOEM, 


In  1884,  Mark  Twain  and  George  W. 
Cable  made  a  general  tour  of  the  country, 
each  giving  readings  from  his  own  works. 
Cordial  receptions  and  crowded  houses 
greeted  them  everywhere.  The  platform 
was  not  a  novelty  to  Mark  Twain.  He 
had  delivered  lectures  in  California  and 
Nevada  in  1866  and  1867,  had  appeared 
in  public  upon  several  occasions  in  Eng 
land,  and  had  spoken  a  number  of  times 
at  dinners  and  banquets  in  New  York 
and  Boston.  He  became  known  as  a  man 
possessing  remarkable  powers  of  elocu 
tion,  and  his  parlor  readings  of  Shake 
speare  were  said  to  be  masterly  perform 
ances.  Strong  inducements  had  been 
offered  him  to  lecture  abroad,  even  so  far 
away  as  Australia.  In  1 884  he  consented 


His  Life  and  Work.  147 

to  lecture  in  America  for  a  period  not  ex 
ceeding  five  months. 

In  December,  1884,  Mark  Twain  and 
George  W.  Cable  appeared  in  Cleveland. 
They  arrived  one  afternoon  and  regis 
tered  at  the  Forest  City  House.  I  called 
to  pay  my  respects.  Was  Mr.  Clemens 
in  ?  Yes,  but  he  had  just  eaten  dinner, 
it  then  being  three  o'clock,  and  had  gone 
to  bed,  not  to  be  disturbed  until  seven 
o'clock,  excepting  in  case  Mr.  John  Hay, 
the  author  of  "Little  Breeches/1  called. 
Mr.  Clemens  would  see  Mr.  Hay,  but  no 
other  human  being  could  entice  him  from 
his  bed.  In  the  evening  occurred  the 
entertainment.  Mr.  Cable  read  passages 
from  his  novel  "Dr.  Sevier."  Mark 
Twain  came  upon  the  stage  walking 
slowly,  apparently  in  deep  meditation. 
Those  present  saw  a  rather  small  man, 
with  a  big  head,  with  bushy  gray  hair, 
heavy  dark  eyebrows,  a  receding  c'un,  a 
long  face,  toothless  gums  visible  between 
the  lips,  an  iron-gray  mustache,  closely 
cut  and  stiff.  The  right  hand  involun 
tarily  stroked  the  receding  chin,  and  a 


14.8  Mark  Twain 

merry  twinkle  came  into  his  eyes,  as  he 
advanced  to  the  front  of  the  stage  and 
began  to  recite,  in  his  peculiar,  drawling 
and  deliberate  way,  "King  Sollermun," 
taken  from  advance  sheets  of  (<  Huckle 
berry  Finn."  When  he  had  finished,  he 
turned  and  boyishly  ran  off  the  stage, 
with  a  sort  of  dog  trot.  Then  I  remem 
ber  that  Mr.  Cable  came  on,  told  us  all 
about  "Kate  Riley"  and  "Ristofolo,"  and 
then,  in  imitation  of  Mark  Twain,  tried 
to  run  off  the  stage  in  the  same  playful 
manner.  I  remember  also  what  a  deplor 
able  failure  Mr.  Cable  made  of  the  at 
tempt,  how  his  gentle  trot  reminded  me 
of  a  duck  going  down  hill,  and  how 
eventually  he  collided  with  one  of  the 
scenes,  and  lastly  how  the  audience 
roared  with  laughter.  Then  Mark  came 
forward  again  with  his  '  'Tragic  Tale  of 
the  Fishwife,"  followed  by  Cable,  who 
walked  soberly  now,  like  a  Baptist  dea 
con.  Twain  told  us  of  "A  Trying  Situa 
tion,"  and  finally  concluded  the  enter 
tainment  with  one  of  his  inimitable  ghost 
stories. 


His  Life  and  Work.  149 

He  is  a  good  talker,  and  invariably 
prepares  himself,  though  he  skillfully 
hides  his  preparation  by  his  method  of 
delivery,  which  denotes  that  he  is  getting 
his  ideas  and  phrases  as  he  proceeds.  He 
is  an  accomplished  artist  in  his  way. 
His  peculiar  mode  of  expression  always 
seems  contagious  with  an  audience,  and  a 
laugh  would  follow  the  most  sober  re 
mark.  It  is  a  singular  fact  that  an  audi 
ence  will  be  in  a  laughing  mood,  when 
they  first  enter  the  lecture  room;  they 
are  ready  to  burst  out  at  anything  and 
everything.  In  the  town  of  Colchester, 
Connecticut,  there  was  a  good  illustration 
of  this,  the  Hon.  Demshain  Hornet  having 
a  most  unpleasant  experience  at  the  ex 
pense  of  Mark  Twain.  Mr.  Clemens 
was  advertised  to  lecture  in  the  town  of 
Colchester,  but  for  some  reason  failed  to 
arrive.  In  the  emergency  the  lecture 
committee  decided  to  employ  Mr.  Hor 
net  to  deliver  his  celebrated  lecture  on 
temperance,  but  so  late  in  the  day  was 
this  arrangement  made  that  no  bills  an 
nouncing  it  could  be  circulated,  and  the 


150  Mark  Twain 


audience  assembled,  expecting  to  hear 
Mark  Twain.  No  one  in  the  town  knew 
Mr.  Clemens,  or  had  ever  heard  him  lec 
ture,  and  they  entertained  the  idea  that 
he  was  funny,  and  went  to  the  lecture 
prepared  to  laugh.  Even  those  upon  the 
platform,  excepting  the  chairman,  did 
not  know  Mr.  Hornet  from  Mark  Twain, 
and  so,  when  he  was  introduced,  thought 
nothing  of  the  name,  as  they  knew 
"Mark  Twain"  was  a  nom  de  plume,  and 
supposed  his  real  name  was  Hornet. 

Mr.  Hornet  bowed  politely,  looked 
about  him,  and  remarked:  "Intemper 
ance  is  the  curse  of  the  country."  The 
audience  burst  into  a  merry  laugh.  He 
knew  it  could  not  be  at  his  remark,  and 
thought  his  clothes  must  be  awry,  and 
he  asked  the  chairman,  in  a  whisper,  if 
he  was  all  right,  and  received  "yes"  for 
an  answer.  Then  he  said:  "Rum  slays 
more  than  disease  !  "  Another,  but  louder 
laugh  followed.  He  could  not  under 
stand  it,  but  proceeded:  "It  breaks  up 
happy  homes  !  "  Still  louder  mirth.  ''It 
is  carrying  young  men  down  to  death  and 


His  Life  and  Werk.  151 

hell !  "     Then  came  a  perfect  roar  of  ap 
plause.     Mr.  Hornet   began   to   get  ex 
cited.       He   thought   they   were  poking 
fun   at   him,  but  went   on:    "We  must 
crush  the  serpent !  "   A  tremendous  howl 
of  laughter.     The  men  on  the  platform, 
except   the   chairman,  squirmed  as  they 
laughed.   Then  Hornet  got  mad.  "What 
I  say  is  Gospel  truth, "he  cried.  The  audi 
ence  fairly  bellowed  with  mirth.     Hornet 
turned  to  a  man  on   the  stage,  and  said: 
"Do   you  see  anything  very  ridiculous  in 
my   remarks   or  behavior?"     "Yes,  ha, 
ha !    It's  intensely  funny — ha,  ha,    ha ! 
Go  on  !  "  replied  the  roaring  man.     '  'This 
is  an  insult,"  cried   Hornet,  wildly  danc 
ing  about.     More  laughter,  and  cries  of 
"Go  on,  Twain!"     Then   the  chairman 
began  to  see  through  a  glass  darkly,  and 
arose  and  quelled  the  merriment,  and  ex 
plained  the  situation,  and  the  men  on  the 
stage  suddenly  ceased   laughing,  and  the 
folks  in  the   audience   looked   sheepish, 
and  they  quit  laughing  too,  and  then  the 
excited   Mr.    Hornet,    being   thoroughly 
mad,  told   them  he  had  never  before  got 


152  Mark  Twain 


into  a  town  so  entirely  populated  with 
asses  and  idiots,  and  having  said  that  he 
left  the  hall  in  disgust,  followed  by  the 
audience  in  deep  gloom. 

When  Mr.  Clemens  and  Mr.  Cable  ap 
peared  in  Albany,  New  York,  they  paid 
their  respects  to  the  Governor,  and  visited 
the  State  capitol.  They  entered  the  Ad 
jutant-General's  office,  and  finding  the 
official  out,  they  sat  down  to  await  his 
return.  There  were  a  considerable  num 
ber  of  gentlemen  in  the  party,  and  the 
chairs  were  soon  occupied.  Mr.  Clemens 
sat  down  carelessly  on  one  of  the  Adjut 
ant-General's  official  tables.  The  party 
were  chatting  cheerfully  and  conducting 
themselves  peacefully,  when  a  dozen 
clerks  and  deputies  of  the  department- 
came  rushing  into  the  office,  and  with 
unusual  vehemence,  asked  what  was 
wanted.  None  of  the  visiting  party 
seemed  to  understand  the  situation.  An 
investigation,  however,  disclosed  the  fact 
that  Mark  Twain,  by  accident  or  design, 
had  planted  himself  squarely  on  a  long 


His  Life  and  Work.  153 

row  of  electric  buttons,  and  thus  set  ring, 
ing  a  score  or  more  of  call  bells. 

In  Montreal,  upon  the  occasion  of 
Mark  Twain's  appearance,  there  were  a 
large  number  of  Frenchmen  in  the  audi 
ence.  This  caused  him  to  introduce  into 
his  lecture  the  following: 

4 'Where  so  many  of  the  guests  are 
French,  the  propriety  will  be  recognized 
of  my  making  a  portion  of  my  speech  in 
the  beautiful  language,  in  order  that  I 
may  be  partly  understood.  I  speak 
French  with  timidity,  and  not  flowingly, 
except  when  excited.  When  using  that 
language,  I  have  noticed  that  I  have 
hardly  ever  been  mistaken  for  a  French 
man,  except,  perhaps,  by  horses;  never, 
I  believe,  by  people.  I  had  hoped  that 
mere  French  construction,  with  English 
words,  would  answer;  but  this  is  not  the 
case.  I  tried  it  at  a  gentleman's  house 
in  Quebec,  and  it  would  not  work.  The 
maid- servant  asked,  "What  would  mon 
sieur?"  I  said,  "Monsieur  So-and-So, 
is  he  with  himself?  "  She  did  not  under 
stand.  I  said,  "  Is  it  that  he  is  still  not 


154  Mark  Twain 


returned  to  his  house  of  merchandise  ?  " 
She  did  not  understand  that  either.     I 
said,    "He  will  desolate  himself  when  he 
learns  that  his  friend  American   was  ar 
rived,  and  he  not  with  himself  to  shake 
him  at  the  hand."     She  did  not  even  un 
derstand  that;    I   don't   know  why,  but 
she  didn't,  and  she  lost  her  temper  be 
sides.     Somebody  in  the  rear  called  out, 
"Qui  est  done  la?"  or  words  to  that 
effect.     She  said,    "C'est  un  fou,"  and 
shut  the  door  on  me.     Perhaps  she  was 
right;  but  how  did  she  ever  find  that  out? 
For  she  had  never  seen  me  before  till 
that   moment.     But,  as   I   have  already 
intimated,  I  will  close  this  oration  with  a 
few  sentiments  in  the  French  language. 
I  have  not  ornamented  them.     I  have  not 
burdened  them  with  flowers  of  rhetoric, 
for,  to  my  mind,  that  literature  is   best 
and  most  enduring  which  is  characterized 
by  a  noble  simplicity:    JPai  belle  bouton 
d'or  de  mon  oncle,  mais  je  n'ai  pas  celui 
du  charpentier.     Si  vous  avez  le  fromage 
du  brave  menuisier,  c'est  bon;  mais  si 
vous  ne  Tavez  pas,  ne  vous  desolez  pas, 


His  Life  and  Work. 


prenez  le  chapeau  de  drap  noir  de  son 
beaufrere  malade.  Tout  a  1'heure  !  Sa- 
voir  faire  !  Qu'est  ce  que  vous  dites  ! 
Pate  de  fois  gras  !  Revenons  a  nos  mou- 
tons  !  Pardon,  messieurs,  pardonnez 
moi;  essayant  a  parler  la  belle  langue 
d'Ollendorf  strains  me  more  than  you  can 
possibly  imagine.  But  I  mean  well,  and 
I've  done  the  best  I  could." 

Mr.  Clemens  met  with  an  amusing  ad 
venture  when  he  and  Mr.  Cable  were 
making  their  tour  in  the  South.  A  mis 
guided  but  enthusiastic  young  man  man 
aged,  after  some  difficulty,  to  secure  an 
introduction  to  the  humorist  on  a  river 
steamer,  just  before  the  latter's  departure 
from  New  Orleans  for  St.  L,ouis.  The 
young  man  said:  "  I've  read  ail  of  your 
writings,  Mr.  Twain,  but  I  think  I  like 
'The  Heathen  Chinee'  the  best  of  them 
all."  Mr.  Clemens  shook  the  young 
man's  hand  with  tremendous  enthusiasm. 
"My  dear  sir,"  he  remarked,  "I  am 
pretty  well  used  to  complements,  but  I 
must  say  I  never  received  one  which  gave 
me  equal  satisfaction,  and  showed  so 


156  Mark  Twain 


kindly  an  appreciation  of  efforts  to  please 
the  public.  A  thousand  thanks."  And 
the  young  man  replied,  "You  are  per 
fectly  welcome,  Mr.  Twain.  I  am  sure 
you  deserve  it." 

Shortly  after  his  return  from  his  lecture 
tour,  the  representative  of  a  leading  pub 
lishing  house  called  upon  Mr.  Clemens 
at  his  Hartford  residence,  offering  him 
his  own  price  for  a  certain  contribution 
which  was  specially  desired.  "Well,  I 
tell  you,"  said  Mark,  with  his  inimitable 
drawl,  "I  have  just  got  a  thundering  big 
book  through  me,  and  an  awful  lecture 
course  through  the  people  of  this  unfor 
tunate  country,  and  I  feel  like  an  ana 
conda  that  had  swallowed  a  goat.  I 
don't  want  to  turn  over  or  wiggle  again 
for  six  months."  This  was  his  way  of 
declining  the  offer. 

After  dinner  speaking  became  as  natu 
ral  to  Mr.  Clemens,  as  his  appearance 
upon  the  lecture  platform,  and  he  has  won 
the  title  of  being  the  most  entertaining 
table  talker  in  America.  Not  many 
years  since  he  was  present  at  a  monthly 


His  Life  and  Work. 


meeting  of  the  Military  Service  Institute, 
on  Governor's  Island.  General  W.  T. 
Sherman  and  General  Schofield  were 
present.  Mr.  Clemens  said  that  that 
which  he  was  about  to  read  was  part  of  a 
still  uncompleted  book,  of  which  he 
would  give  the  first  chapter  by  way  of 
explanation,  and  follow  it  with  selected 
fragments,  *  'or  outline  the  rest  of  it  in 
bulk,  so  to  speak;  do  as  the  dying  cow 
boy  admonished  his  :  p'ritual  adviser  to 
do,  'just  leave  out  the  details  and  heave 
in  the  bottom  facts.'  " 

Once  upon  a  time  a  military  regiment 
from  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  visited 
Hartford,  and  the  humorist  was  put  for 
ward,  as  the  spokesman,  to  welcome, 
officially,  the  soldier  guests  of  the  city. 
Among  other  things  he  said:  "When 
asked  to  respond,  I  said  I  would  be  glad 
to,  but  there  were  reasons  why  I  could 
not  make  a  speech.  But  I  said  I  would 
talk.  I  never  made  a  speech  without 
getting  together  a  lot  of  statistics  and  be 
ing  instructive.  The  man  who  starts  in 
upon  a  speech  without  preparation  enters 


158  Mark  Twain 


upon  a  sea  of  infelicities  and  troubles.  I 
had  thought  of  a  great  many  things  I 
had  intended  to  say.  In  fact  nearly  all 
of  these  things  I  have  heard  here  to-night 
I  had  thought  of.  Get  a  man  away 
down  here  on  the  list,  and  he  starts  out 
empty.  One  reason  I  didn't  like  to  come 
here  to  make  a  prepared  speech  was  be 
cause  I  have  sworn  off.  I  have  reformed, 
I  would  not  make  a  prepared  speech 
without  statistics  and  philosophy.  The 
advantage  of  a  prepared  speech  is  that 
3^ou  start  when  you  are  ready  and  stop 
when  you  get  through.  If  unprepared, 
you  are  all  at  sea,  you  don't  know  where 
you  are.  I  thought  to  achieve  brevity, 
but  I  was  mistaken.  A  man  never  hangs 
on  so  long  on  his  hind  legs  as  when  he 
don't  know  when  to  stop.  I  once  heard 
a  man  who  tried  to  be  reformed.  He 
tried  to  be  brief.  A  number  of  strangers 
sat  in  a  hotel  parlor.  One  sat  off  to  one 
side  and  said  nothing.  Finally  all  went 
out  except  one  man  and  this  dummy. 
The  dummy  touched  this  man  on  the 
shoulder  and  said:  "I  think  I  have  s-s-s-e 


His  Life  and  Work.  159 

(whistles)  een  you  before."  *  'What  makes 
you  whistle?"  asked  the  other  man.  "I 
used  to  stammer,  and  the  d-d-d-d-  (whis 
tles)  octor  told  me  when  I  w-w-w-w-w- 
(whistles)  anted  to  speak  and  s-s-s-s-tam- 
mered  to  whistle.  I  d-d-d-d-  (whistle)  id 
whistle  and  it  c-c-c-c-ured  me."  So  it  is 
with  a  man  who  makes  an  unprepared 
speech.  He  tries  to  be  brief  and  it  takes 
him  longer.  I  won't  detain  you.  We 
welcome  you  with  cordial  hospitality, 
and  if  you  will  remain  we  will  try  and 
furnish  better  weather  to-morrow." 

;One  of  his  famous  after  dinner  speeches 
was  in  response  to  the  toast, '  'The  Babies, " 
and  another  was  his  speech  on  * 'Woman," 
at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  New  England 
Society,  some  years  ago.  He  spoke  im 
mediately  after  General  Grant.  Among 
the  good  things  he  said  were  the  follow 
ing:  "The  daughter  of  modern  civiliza 
tion  is  a  marvel  of  exquisite  and  beautiful 
art  and  expense.  All  the  lands,  all  the 
climes,  all  the  arts  are  laid  under  tribute 
to  furnish  her  forth.  Her  linen  is  from 
Belfast;  her  robe  is  from  Paris;  her  fan 


160  Mark  Twain 


from  Japan;  her  card  case  is  from  China; 
her  watch  is  from  Geneva;  *.*  *  her 
hair  from — from — I  don't  know  where 
her  hair  is  from — I  never  could  find  out. 
That  is  her  other  hair — her  public  hair — 
her  Sunday  hair.  I  don't  mean  the  hair 
she  goes  to  bed  with.  Why  you  ought 
to  know  the  hair  I  mean;  it's  that  thing 
which  she  calls  a  switch,  and  which  re 
sembles  a  switch  as  much  as  it  does  a 
brickbat  or  a  shotgun.  It's  that  thing 
that  she  twists  and  then  coils  round  and 
round  her  head,  beehive  fashion,  and 
then  tucks  the  end  in  under  the  hive  and 
harpoons  it  with  a  hairpin." 

In  1885,  at  the  Academy  of  Music,  in 
Philadelphia,  occurred  a  benefit  perform 
ance  for  the  Actors'  Fund.  The  house 
was  crowded.  Joseph  Murphy  had  just 
given  the  graveyard  scene  from  "Shaun 
Rhue."  The  widower  and  his  little  son 
visit  the  grave  of  the  wife  and  mother 
and  go  through  some  very  pathetic  in 
cidents.  A  delay  occurred  after  the 
"Shaun  Rhue"  had  sorrowfully  led  his  off 
spring  from  the  hallowed  spot.  The 


His  Life  and  Work.  161 

audience  was  in  the  usual  sympathetic 
condition  after  the  scene,  and  noses  were 
blown  generously  in  the  commendable 
effort  to  brace  up  for  the  appearance  of 
Mark  Twain,  who  was  to  come  on  next 
and  read  his  ridiculous  '  'Tale  of  a  Fish 
wife."  The  dozen  mounds,  with  their 
crosses  and  head  pieces  that  had  been 
used  to  make  up  the  scene  of  the  ceme 
tery,  had  not  been  removed,  and  the  idea 
that  the  humorist  would  have  to  read  his 
nonsense  in  such  surroundings  caused 
anxiety.  Twain  was  standing  at  the 
wing  ready  to  go  on,  and  many  saw  him. 
The  uneasiness  of  the  people  became 
more  universal,  as  it  now  seemed  inevit 
able  that  a  most  grotesque  picture  would 
be  thrust  upon  them.  An  appalling 
blunder  in  stage  management  seemed 
about  to  be  committed.  The  gentlemen 
who  had  charge  of  the  entertainment 
were  sitting  in  a  box  at  the  right  of  the 
stage,  and  could  plainly  see  Twain's  em 
barrassment.  Both  made  a  rush  for  be 
hind  the  scenes  to  order  the  removal  of 
the  graves.  But  they  were  too  late.  As 


162  Mark  Twain 


they  flew  through  the  box  door,  Mark 
Twain  stepped  cautiously  on  the  stage. 
He  took  a  couple  of  steps  forward, 
glanced  up  at  the  picture  before  him  and 
stopped  short.  He  turned  his  head  to 
ward  whence  he  had  come,  as  though 
looking  for  the  manager,  gave  an  agon 
izing  glance  of  appeal,  muttered  some 
thing  that  had  the  tone  of  vigor,  but  at 
last  went  ahead.  He  made  his  way  down 
to  the  footlights  with  halting,  uncertain 
steps,  fumbling  his  notes  between  his 
fingers  and  casting  nervous  looks  at  the 
solemn  signs  of  death  that  half  sur 
rounded  him.  At  last  he  got  squarely 
before  the  audience.  By  this  time  every 
person  in  the  house  was  thoroughly  un 
comfortable.  A  weak  effort  at  applause 
had  been  made  by  some  of  the  bravest 
hearted  on  the  appearance  of  the  humor 
ist,  but  Mark's  indifference  to  the  recep 
tion  and  the  overwhelming  incongruity 
of  the  scene  had  a  saddening  effect.  The 
house  became  so  still  that  the  rolling  of 
a  ball  of  cotton  could  have  been  heard. 
He  stood  before  the  leader  of  the.or- 


His  Life  and  Work. 


chestra  like  a  schoolboy  about  to  speak 
his  first  piece.  Never  a  model  of  the 
aesthetic  in  action,  he  was  now  painfully 
awkward  and  confused.  He  twisted  his 
notes  and  wiggled  his  fingers,  every  now 
and  then  looking  over  his  shoulder  at  the 
scene  of  death  with  gazes  of  suspicion 
and  apprehension.  He  remained  looking 
foolish  for  many  seconds,  two  cr  three 
times  making  an  ineffectual  attempt  to 
say  something.  At  length  he  found 
voice,  and  in  his  drawling  tones,  even 
longer  drawn  out  than  usual,  the  embar 
rassed  reader  said: 

<(  Indies  and  gentlemen,  er  —  this  —  er 
—  melancholy  occasion  gives  me  an  —  er  — 
opportunity  to  make  an  —  er  —  explanation 
that  I  have  long  desired  to  deliver  myself 
of.  I  rise  to  a  question  of  the  highest 
privilege  before  a  Philadelphia  audience." 

The  audience,  without  the  remotest 
idea  of  what  was  coming  still  sat  quiet 
and  expectant.  Mr.  Clemens  continued; 

"In  the  course  of  my  checkered  career 
I  have,  on  diverse  occasions,  been 
charged,  always  maliciously,  of  course, 


164  Mark  Twain 

with  more  or  less  serious  offenses.  It  is 
in  reply  to  one  of  the  more — er — impor 
tant  of  these  that  I  wish  to  speak.  More 
than  once  I  have  been  accused  of  writing 
the  obituary  poetry  in  the  Philadelphia 
Ledger." 

A  gentle  smile  was  seen  to  pass  over 
the  faces  of  the  multitude,  and  pleasant 
feeling  began  to  assert  itself. 

"I  wish  right  here,"  went  on  Mr. 
Clemens,  with  gathered  self-possession, 
<%to  deny  that  terrible  assertion."  The 
audience  now  laughed  outright,  and  com 
fort  was  pretty  well  restored.'  "I  will 
admit,  that  once,  when  a  compositor  in 
the  Ledger  establishment,  I  did  set  up 
some  of  that  poetry,  but  for  a  worse 
offence  than  that  no  indictment  can  be 
found  against  me."  And  then,  in  an  out 
raged  manner,  the  humorist  exclaimed: 
"I  did  not  write  that  poetry,"  and  then, 
after  a  pause,  "at  least,  not  all  of  it." 

The  reader  had  his  hearers  with  him 
after  that,  and  he  never  read  his  "Tale  of 
a  Fishwife"  to  a  more  appreciative  audi 
ence. 


His  Life  and  Work.  16$ 


X. 

MAKE  TWAIN  AT  HOME, 


When,  in  1868,  Samuel  L.  Clemens 
visited  the  city  of  Hartford,  Connecticut, 
to  arrange  for  the  publication  of  his  first 
book,  <l Innocents  Abroad,"  he  was  capti 
vated  by  the  old  town  and  its  beautiful 
suburbs.  Later,  in  1871,  when  he  deter 
mined  upon  leaving  Buffalo  and  taking 
up  his  residence  in  an  eastern  city,  it 
was  not  strange  that  he  should  select 
Hartford  as  the  site  for  his  permanent 
home.  In  a  corner  of  the  Nook  Farm, 
on  Farmington  avenue,  about  a  mile  and 
a  quarter  from  the  business  center  of  the 
city,  he  built  a  large,  unique  house  of 
brick  and  stone.  The  building  was  of 
the  Queen  Anne  style  of  architecture, 
which,  just  at  that  time,  was  the  most 


166  Mark  Twain 


popular,  as  well  as  the  most  aristocratic 
mode  of  residence  in  vogue.  There  were 
gables  and  arches  and  quaint  windows, 
and  in  many  of  these,  boxes  of  flowers 
were  placed.  The  house  was  built  in 
the  center  of  a  park-like  grove  of  old 
trees,  and  the  hand  of  a  Scotch  landscape 
artist  soon  molded  hedges,  flower  beds 
and  a  well-kept  lawn.  To-day  it  stands 
a  home  of  homes.  A  porte  cochere,  cov 
ered  with  vines,  extends  from  the  en 
trance,  under  which  the  carriages  drive. 
The  exterior  of  the  house  has  the  air  of  a 
luxurious,  old,  English  home. 

From  the  day  that  Mark  Twain  and 
his  young  wife  took  up  their  abode  in 
their  Hart  lord  home,  money  was  ex 
pended  with  lavish  hands,  and  the  result 
has  been  a  rich,  charming,  artistic  and 
home-like  interior.  One  is  ushered  into 
an  immense  square  hall,  the  floor  of 
which  is  in  marble  tiles  of  peculiar  pat 
tern.  A  winding  staircase,  very  wide 
and  massive,  of  heavily  carved  English 
oak  extends  above.  Opposite  the  front 
door  are  double  doors  leading  into  the 


His  Life  and  Work.  167 

library.  Near  these  doors  in  the  hall, 
stands  upon  a  marble  pedestal,  the  bust 
of  Mr.  Clemens,  executed  by  young  Carl 
Gerhardt.  There  are  also  paintings  on 
the  carved  oaken  walls  of  the  hall  and  a 
heavily  carved  table.  To  the  right  are 
double  doors  leading  into  the  large  draw 
ing-room.  All  the  doors  and  windows 
are  draped  at  the  top  by  handsome  lam 
brequins;  the  doors  and  woodwork  are 
of  dark  polished  wTood,  covered  with 
stencil  designs  in  metallic  paint,  so  that 
at  a  short  distance  they  look  as  if  inlaid 
with  mother-of-pearl.  The  drawing- 
room  is  furnished  with  light-colored 
satin  furniture.  Leading  from  this  apart 
ment  is  the  dining-room,  which  is  finished 
in  heavy  carved  woods  of  the  most  elab 
orate  workmanship;  high  carved  dado, 
old  tapestry  portieres,  a  massive  buffet 
covered  with  cut  glass  and  silverware. 
An  odd  idea  is  a  window  directly  over 
the  fireplace;  it  is  of  one  solid  piece  of 
plate  glass,  surrounded  by  a  frame  of 
dark  blue  glass,  and  inside  that,  like  the 
mat  of  a  picture,  opal  glass,  as  one  looks 


i68  Mark  Twain 


out  at  the  beautiful  landscape,  he  can 
hardly  realize  at  first  that  it  is  nature's 
handiwork  thus  framed  in,  instead  of  a 
painting  actually  hanging  upon  the  wall. 
The  flue  of  the  fireplace  extends  each 
side  of  this  picturesque  window.  Con 
nected  with  the  dining- room  is  the  library, 
which  is  the  general  living  room.  It  has 
large  double  doors  leading  into  the  front 
hall  opposite  the  entrance.  It  is  a  sunny, 
cheerful  room,  with  a  huge,  heavily 
carved  fireplace  which  Mr.  Clemens 
brought  from  Europe,  where  it  had  once 
held  place  in  an  ancient  castle;  it  seems 
to  have  brought  with  it  to  this  American 
home  some  of  the  dignity,  pomp  and 
vsplendor  of  which  it  once  formed  an  im 
portant  part.  The  room  looks  as  if  it 
belonged  to  a  baronial  castle,  but  in 
winter  it  is  less  sombre,  and  a  blazing 
fire  of  logs  burns  behind  the  brass  fender, 
bringing  into  greater  prominence  the 
motto  cut  in  brass  above  the  fire:  "The 
ornament  of  a  house  is  the  friends  that 
frequent  it."  Oa  either  side  are  low 
book  shelves  built  against  the  wall;  they 


His  Life  and  Work.  169 

form  a  part  of  the  massive  chimney-piece 
and  look  like  wings  of  a  great  bat.  The 
floor  is  covered  with  rugs  and  luxurious 
seats  are  fitted  into  the  windows;  a  large 
carved  table  stands  in  the  center  covered 
with  magazines  and  papers. 

The  whole  house  has  rather  the  ap 
pearance  of  an  old  castle,  with  the  carv 
ings  grotesque  and  ponderous,  Instead  of 
the  old  mahogany  of  colonial  days.  A 
wide  oaken  staircase  leads  to  the  apart 
ments  above,  the  most  conspicuous  of 
which  is  a  large  room  fitted  up  most  com 
fortably  with  cozy  nooks  filled  in  with 
cushioned  seats.  Beyond  is  a  room  in 
which  a  large  rocking  horse  and  scattered 
toys  make  one  acquainted  with  the  reason 
Mr.  Clemens  ceased  writing  in  this  at 
tractive  apartment  and  moved  still  further 
up-stairs  to  a  corner  of  the  billiard  room. 
Each  suite  of  apartments  has  its  separate 
bathroom.  One  guest  chamber  is  fur 
nished  in  pink  silk;  even  the  bedstead  is 
of  pink  silk  tufted  all  over  with  tiny 
satin  buttons. 


Ifo  Mark  Twain 


The  study  or  work  room  of  the  humor 
ist  is  the  billiard  room,  upon  the  upper 
floor,  the  windows  of  which  look  out 
upon  the  broad  acres  of  beautiful  land 
scape.  In  the  distance  is  heard  the  ripple 
of  Park  river.  In  the  corner  of  the  room 
is  his  writing-table,  covered  usually  with 
books,  manuscripts,  letters  and  other 
literary  litter;  and  in  the  middle  of  the 
room  stands  the  billiard- table.  Mr. 
Clemens  is  an  expert  billiard  player,  and 
when  he  tires  of  writing  at  his  little  desk 
in  the  corner,  he  rises  and  makes  some 
scientific  strokes  with  the  cue.  A  resi 
dent  of  Hartford  says  that  he  called  upon 
Mark  once  in  the  billiard  room,  when 
the  fire  in  the  grate  threw  some  sparks 
out  upon  the  floor.  These  caught  some 
loose  paper  and  the  room  for  a  moment 
promised  to  break  out  in  flames.  '  'Twain 
was  playing  billiards  at  the  time,"  says 
the  man,  "and  he  did  not  stop  his  game. 
He  immediately  rung  for  the  servants, 
and  lazily  told  them  that  they  had  better 
extinguish  the  fire,  and  with  that  he 
leaned  over  the  table  and  made  a  stroke 


His  Life  and  Work.  171 

with  his  billiard  cue  which  would  have 
done  honor  to  the  world's  champion. 
Twain  never  gets  excited." 

The  study  is  a  long  room  with  sloping 
sides  formed  by  the  roof.  There  are 
three  balconies  adjacent,  two  large  ones 
on  either  side,  and  one  at  the  end.  One 
may  step  out  into  these  through  regular 
doors.  His  mode  of  work  in  this  study 
is  systematic.  He  makes  it  an  invariable 
rule  to  perform  a  certain  amount  of  literary 
work  every  day,  and  his  working  hours 
are  made  continuous  by  his  not  taking 
any  midday  meal.  He  is  mercilous 
toward  his  own  productions,  and  has 
often  destroyed  an  entire  day's  labor  as 
soon  as  it  was  written.  He  found  by  ex 
perience  that  the  final  result  was  more 
satisfactory  by  taking  this  course,  than 
by  trying  to  remodel  what  he  considered 
a  faulty  manuscript.  In  this  way  he  has 
destroyed  hundreds  of  pages  of  manu 
script,  and  from  one  of  his  larger  books  he 
culled  out  no  less  than  five  hundred  pages. 

Since  his  advent  in  the  city  of  Hart 
ford,  Mark  Twain  has  won  for  himself 


172  Mark  Twain 


the  name  of  "prince  of  entertainers." 
Seated  in  his  richly  furnished  library,  to 
whose  beauty  and  artistic  completeness 
half  the  lands  of  Europe  have  contributed, 
he  will  tell  an  anecdote  or  discuss  a 
literary  or  social  question  with  a  calm 
directness  and  earnestness,  revealing  to 
you  an  entirely  new  side  of  his  character, 
that  has  nothing  in  common  with  that 
which  he  is  wont  to  display  to  the  public 
who  throng  to  his  lectures.  Even  his 
drollest  stories  he  relates  with  this  same 
earnest  impressiveness,  and  with  a  face 
as  serious  as  a  sexton's.  His  brilliancy 
has  a  certain  delightful  quality  which  is 
almost  too  evanescent  to  be  imprisoned 
in  any  one  phrase.  You  have  no  oppres 
sive  consciousness  that  you  are  expected 
to  laugh;  you  rather  feel  as  if  the  talker 
had  unexpectedly  taken  you  into  his  con 
fidence,  and  you  feel  your  heart  going 
out  toward  him  in  return.  He  is  a 
reader  of  the  finest  discriminating  faculty, 
high  dramatic  power,  and  remarkable 
sympathetic  interpretation,  and  his  read 
ing  of  Browning,  whom  he  greatly  ad- 


His  Life  and  Work. 


mires,  is  a  rare  entertainment.  He  is  a 
leading  member  of  the  Monday  Evening 
Club  of  Hartford,  the  Authors'  Club,  the 
Century  Club,  the  Actors'  Club  of  New 
York,  and  other  social  and  literary  or 
ganizations. 

During  the  summer  months,  Mr. 
Clemens  and  his  family  sojourn  at  Quarry 
Farm,  near  Elrnira,  New  York,  at  the 
home  of  Mr.  T.  W.  Crane,  whose  wife  is 
a  sister  of  Mrs.  Clemens.  Here  among 
the  historic  hills  of  the  Chemung  valley, 
the  humorist  works  with  the  same  sys 
tematic  rule  as  in  the  study  of  his  Hart 
ford  house.  A  friend  who  visited  Mr. 
Clemens  in  his  summer  retreat,  writes  as 
follows: 

*  'A  summer  house  has  been  built  for 
Mr.  Clemens  within  the  Crane  grounds, 
on  a  high  peak,  which  stands  six  hun 
dred  feet  above  the  valley  that  lies  spread 
out  before  it.  The  house  is  built  almost 
entirely  of  glass,  and  is  modelled  ex 
actly  on  the  plan  of  a  Mississippi  steam 
boat's  pilot-house.  Here,  shut  off  from 
all  outside  communication,  Mr.  Clemens 


if 4'.  Mark  Twain 


does  the  hard  work  of  the  year,  or  rather 
the  confining  and  engrossing  work  of 
writing,  which  demands  continuous  ap 
plication,  day  after  day.  The  lofty 
work-room  is  some  distance  from  the 
house.  He  goes  to  it  every  morning 
about  half-past  eight  and  stays  there  un 
til  called  to  dinner  by  the  blowing  of  a 
horn  about  five  o'clock.  He  takes  no 
lunch  or  noon  meal  of  any  sort,  and 
works  without  eating,  while  the  rules  are 
imperative  not  to  disturb  him  during  this 
working  period.  His  only  recreation  is 
his  cigar." 

Another  correspondent  wrote  as  follows: 

'  'To  keep   away  the   large   number  of 

visitors  and  sight-seers  who  come  to  view 

the  sanctum,  Twain  posted  upon  his  door 

the  following  notice: 

i  Step  Softly!  Keep  Away!  Do  not  Dis-  • 
|  turb  the  Remains  !  • 

"In  spite  of  this  characteristic  warning 
we  open  the  door  and  enter.  The  floor 
is  bare.  There  is  a  table  in  the  center 
of  the  room  covered  with  books,  news- 


His  Life  and  Work. 


papers,  manuscripts  and  all  the  para 
phernalia  of  authorship.  Over  the  fire 
place  is  a  shelf,  on  which  rests  a  few 
books  and  a  couple  of  boxes  of  choice 
cigars/' 

An   intimate   acquaintance   writing  of 
Mr.  Clemens  and  the  tobacco  habit  says: 

"He  is  an  inveterate  smoker,  and 
smokes  constantly  while  at  his  work, 
and,  indeed,  all  the  time,  from  half-past 
eight  in  the  morning  to  half-past  ten  at 
night,  stopping  only  when  at  his  meals. 
A  cigar  lasts  him  about  forty  minutes, 
now  that  he  has  reduced  to  an  exact 
science  the  act  of  reducing  the  weed  to 
ashes.  So  he  smokes  from  fifteen  to 
twenty  cigars  every  day.  Some  time 
ago  he  was  persuaded  to  stop  the  prac 
tice,  and  actually  went  a  year  and  more 
without  tobacco;  but  he  found  himself 
unable  to  carry  along  important  work 
which  he  undertook,  and  it  was  not  until 
he  resumed  smoking  that  he  could  do  it. 
Since  then  his  faith  in  his  cigar  has  not 
wavered  .  L,ike  other  American  smokers, 
Mr.  Clemens  is  unceasing  in  his  search 


176  Mark  Twain 


for  the  really  satisfactory  cigar  at  a  really 
satisfactory  price,  and,  first  and  last,  has 
gathered  a  good  deal  of  experience  in  the 
pursuit.  It  is  related  that,  having  enter 
tained  a  party  of  gentlemen  one  winter 
evening  in  Hartford,  he  gave  to  each,  just 
before  they  left  the  house,  one  of  a  new 
sort  of  cigar  that  he  was  trying  to  believe 
was  the  object  of  his  search.  He  made 
each  guest  light  it  before  starting.  The 
next  morning  he  found  all  that  he  had 
given  away  lying  on  the  snow  beside  the 
pathway  across  his  lawn.  Each  smoker 
had  been  polite  enough  to  smoke  until 
he  got  out  of  the  house,  but  every  one 
on  gaining  his  liberty  had  yielded  to  the 
instinct  of  self-preservation  and  tossed 
the  cigar  away,  forgetting  that  it  would 
be  found  there  by  daylight.  The  testi 
mony  of  the  next  morning  was  over 
whelming,  and  the  verdict  against  the 
new  brand  was  accepted." 

Some  years  ago  in  making  a  phrenolo 
gical  examination  of  Mark  Twain,  Pro 
fessor  Beall  of  Cincinnati,  made  report  as 
follows: 


His  Life  and  Work. 


"Wit  and  humor  are  very  familiar 
words,  and  yet,  from  the  difficulty  in  de 
fining  them,  or  from  not  distinguishing 
the  particular  mental  mechanism  upon 
which  they  depend,  the  relative  merits 
of  many  authors  are  often  but  vaguely 
understood.  Wit  is  primarily  an  intel 
lectual  perception  of  incongruity  or  un 
expected  relations,  but  the  idea  that  any 
thing  thus  apprehended  is  ludicrous  is 
suggested  by  the  affective  faculty  of 
mirthfulness,  in  the  same  manner  that 
the  understanding  may  perceive  a"  dan 
gerous  object  and  thus  arouse  the  emotion 
of  fear.  The  relation  between  the  intel 
lectual  faculties  and  the  feelings  is  recipro 
cal,  so  that  the  sentiment  of  the  ludi 
crous,  when  strong,  may  prompt  the  in 
tellect  to  create  imaginary  senses  or 
associated  ideas  adapted  to  gratify  It,  or 
become  active  as  the  result  of  real  per 
ceptions.  Talent  for  wit,  then,  depends 
upon  certain  intellectual  activities  com 
bined  with  the  sentiment  of  mirth.  But 
humor  introduces  another  element  — 
namely  secretiveness*  This  propensity 


Mark  Twain 


not  only  creates  the  desire  to  conceal 
.  one's  own  thoughts,  but  gives  almost 
equal  pleasure  in  penetrating  the  dis 
guises  of  others.  It  enables  a  joker  to 
"keep  a  straight  face"  while  telling  a 
story,  and  the  secretiveness  of  the  listener 
.  is  gratified  by  detecting  the  absurdity  in 
.  the  narrative  beneath  the  assumed  gravity 
of  the  speaker.  That  is,  to  the  amusing 
incongruity  of  the  events  in  the  story  is 
added  the  further  incongruity  between 
the  character  of  the  story  and  the  serious 
countenance  of  the  narrator.  The  -Eng 
lish  and  Italians  are  more  humorous  than 
witty,  the  reverse  of  which  is  true  of  the 
French.  Mark  Twain  is  excellent  in 
wit,  but  super-excellent  in  humor.  Se 
cretiveness  is  very  marked  in  the  diame 
ter  of  his  head  just  above  the  ears,  and  is 
indicated  also  by  the  width  of  his  nostrils, 
the  nearly  closed  eyes,  compressed  lips, 
slow,  guarded  manner  of  speech,  etc. 
His  nose  is  of  the  '  'apprehensive"  type 
in  its  great  length  and  somewhat  hooked 
-point,  but  it  is  not  thick  enough  above 
-the  nostrils  to  indicate  taste  for  com- 


His  Life  and  Work.  179 

merce.  This  *  'apprehensive"  or  cautious 
nasal  organ,  so  prominent  in  Dante,  Cal 
vin  and  other  men  celebrated  for  earnest 
ness  and  gravity,  might  seem  an  anomaly 
in  this  case  but  for  the  explanation  that 
cautiousness  and  secretiveness  are  essen 
tial  ingredients  in  genuine  humor.  On 
this  principle  we  can  account  for  the 
temperament  of  our  great  humorist, 
which  is  not  the  laughing,  fat,  rotund 
vital,  but  rather  the  spare,  angular  men 
tal,  or  mental-motive,  which  is  favorable 
to  hard  sense,  logic,  general  intelligence 
and  insight  into  human  nature.  His  in 
tellect  is  well  balanced,  having  a  strong 
foundation  of  perceptive  faculties  which 
gather  details  with  the  fidelity  of  a 
camera.  He  has  also  a  large  upper  fore 
head,  giving  philosophical  power,  ability 
to  generalize,  reason,  plan,  and  see  a 
long  way  ahead.  The  middle  centers, 
or  memory  of  events,  criticism  and  com 
parison,  are  also  well  developed.  His 
eyes  are  rather  deeply  set,  and  his  lan 
guage  is  subordinate  to  his  thought.  - 
The  hollow  temples  indicate  but  little- 


180  Mark  Twain 


music,  and  mirthfulness,  at  the  upper 
corners  of  the  forehead,  is  by  no  means 
remarkable.  Ideality,  or  love  of  beauty, 
is  only  fair.  The  head  measures  22^2 
inches,  which  is  half  an  inch  less  than 
the  average  intellectual  giant,  but  the 
fiber  of  the  whole  man  is  fine,  close  and 
strong,  and  the  cerebral  combination  is 
of  a  very  available  sort.  He  has  very 
ardent  affections,  strong  love  of  approba 
tion,  sense  of  justice,  firmness,  kindness 
and  ability  to  read  character;  with  small 
self-esteem,  love  of  gain,  or  inclination  to 
the  supernatural.  Knowledge  of  the 
world  and  interest  in  humanity  are  his 
leading  traits,  and,  altogether,  he  is  a 
phenomenal  man  of  whom  Americans 
may  well  be  proud." 

Being  extremely  domestic  in  his  tastes 
Mark  Twain  is  fond  of  his  home  life,  and 
of  his  beautiful  children.  His  eldest 
daughter,  Susie,  was  born  in  1872,  Clara 
I^anghorne  was  born  in  1874,  and  Jean 
in  1880.  Another  child,  a  son,  died  in 
infancy.  Mrs.  Clemens  is  described  as 
gentle,  quiet  and  motherly,  ten  years 


His  Lift  and  Work.  i#z 

younger  than  her  husband.  Mr.  Clemens 
is  reported  to  have  said  that  when  his 
mother  died  there  would  be  no  one  left 
in  the  family  to  appreciate  his  jokes.  It 
is  said  Mrs.  Clemens  is  particularly  slow 
in  these  matters.  She  dresses  very 
plainly,  wearing  her  dark  hair  smoothly 
brushed  from  the  parting  in  the  center, 
with  no  crimps  or  attempt  at  dressing. 
She  appears  still  more  sedate  by  usually 
wearing  eye-glasses.  She  is,  however, 
noted  for  her  goodness  and  for  being  a 
fond  mother. 

For  many  years  the  near  neighbors  of 
the  family  have  been  the  families  of  Mr. 
Charles  Dudley  Warner,  Mr.  George 
Warner,  Rev.  Mr.  Twitchell  and  Mrs. 
Harriet  Eeecher  Stowe.  It  is  said  that 
once  when  Mr.  Clemens,  at  the  solicita 
tion  of  his  wife,  called  on  Mrs.  Stowe,  he 
was  so  absent-minded  as  to  put  on  neither 
collar  nor  necktie.  On  Mrs.  Clemens 
remonstrating  on  his  return,  he  said  he 
would  make  it  all  right,  and  accordingly 
sent  a  collar  and  tie  of  his  over  to  Mrs. 
Stowe  in  a  box. 


iS2  Mark  Twain 


Miss  Susie  has  always  been  Mark's 
favorite  child.  She  inherits  much  of  her 
father's  brightness.  She  kept  a  diary  at 
one  time,  in  which  she  noted  the  occur 
rences  in  the  family,  and,  among  other 
things,  the  sayings  of  her  parents.  On 
one  page  she  wrote  that  father  sometimes 
used  stronger  words  when  mother  wasn't 
by  and  he  thought  "we"  didn't  hear. 
Mrs.  Clemens  found  the  diary  and  showed 
it  to  her  husband,  probably  thinking  the 
particular  page  worth  his  notice.  After 
this  Clemens  did  and  said  several  things 
that  were  intended  to  attract  the  child's 
attention,  and  found  them  duly  noted 
afterward.  But  one  day  the  following 
entry  occurred: 

"I  don't  think  I'll  put  down  anything 
more  about  father,  for  I  think  he  does 
things  to  have  me  rot  ice  him,  and  I  be 
lieve  he  reads  this  diary." 

Of  the  Clemens  children,  a  correspond 
ent  of  a  Chicago  newspaper,  tells  of  their 
adventures  with  their  father,  while  on  a 
visit  to  that  city,  as  follows; 


His  Life  and  Work.  183 

"  'We  came  in  last  night,"  said  Mark, 
pulling  at  the  left  side  of  his  mustache. 
"Mrs.  Clemens  is  not  very  well,  neither 
am  I.  I  have  been  amusing  the  children. 
I  have  taken  them  to  a  panorama.  I 
understand  there  are  three  others  near 
here.  I  will  take  them  there  too.  I 
want  to  satiate  them  with  battles — it 
may  amuse  them."  Three  little  girls 
composed  of  three  red  gowns,  three  red 
parasols  and  six  blue  stockings  stood  on 
the  steps  and  laughed. 

"  (Run  up  and  tell  mamma  what  a 
jolly  time  you've  had  and  I'll  think  of 
something  else  to  amuse  you."  ' 

1  'When  the  three  little  girls  had  dis 
appeared  Mr.  Clemens  sighed.  'Did  you 
ever  try  to  amuse  three  little  girls  at  the 
same  time?'  he  asked,  after  a  pause;  'it 
requires  genius.  I  wonder  whether  they 
would  like  to  bathe  in  the  lake?'  he  con 
tinued,  with  sudden  animation,  hardly 
pausing-  five  minutes  between  each  word, 
'it  might  amuse  them.' 

"  Are  you  on  your  vacation  trip,  Mr. 
Clemens?" 


Mark  Twain 


"  'No;  I  have  just  returned  from  a 
visit  to  my  mother  in  Keokuk,  Iowa. 
We  came  from  Buffalo  to  Duluth  by  a 
lake  steamer  and  then  from  St.  Paul 
down  the  river  to  Keokuk.  Neither  in 
this  country  nor  in  any  other  have  I  seen 
such  interesting  scenery  as  that  along 
the  upper  Mississippi.  One  finds  all  that 
the  Hudson  affords — bluffs  and  w coded 
highlands — and  a  great  deal  in  addition. 
Between  St.  Paul  and  the  mouth  of  the 
Illinois  river  there  are  over  four  hundred 
islands,  strung  out  in  every  possible 
shape.  A  river  without  islands  is  like  a 
woman  without  hair.  She  may  be  good 
and  pure,  but  one  doesn't  fall  in  love 
with  her  very  often.  Did  you  ever  fall 
in  love  with  a  bald-headed  woman?' 
The  reporter  admitted  that  he  had  drawn 
the  line  there. 

"  'I  never  did,  either/  continued  Mr. 
Clemens,  meditatively;  'at  least  I  think 
I  never  did.  There  is  no  place  for  loaf 
ing  more  satisfactory  than  the  pilot  house 
of  a  Mississippi  steamboat.  It  amuses 
the  children  to  see  the  pilot  monkey  with 


His  Life  and  Work.  183 

the  wheel.  Traveling  by  boat  is  the 
best  way  to  travel  unless  one  can  stay  at 
home.  On  a  lake  or  river  boat  one  is  as 
thoroughly  cut  off  from  letters  and 
papers  and  the  tax  collector  as  though 
he  were  amid  sea.  Moreover,  one  doesn't 
have  the  discomforts  of  seafaring.  It  is 
very  unpleasant  to  look  at  sea  sick 
people — at  least  so  my  friends  said  the 
last  time  I  crossed.' 

"  'It  might  amuse  the  children, 
though,'  suggested  the  reporter. 

"'I  hadn't  thought  of  that/  replied 
Mr.  Clemens;  'but  perhaps  it  might. 
The  lake  seems  rather  rough  to-day — I 
wonder  whether  one  could  get  a  boat,  a 
little  boat  that  would  bob  considerably. 
Yes,  it  might  amuse  the  children.' 

"  'But  at  such  a  sacrifice.' 

"  'You  are  not  a  parent?'  replied  the 
humorist. 

"  'It  is  strange,'  continued  Mr.  Clem 
ens,  ia  momentary  forgetfulness  of  the 
children,  'how  little  has  been  written 
about  the  upper  Mississippi.  The  river 
below  St.  L,ouis  has  been  described  time 


i86  Mark  Twain 


and  again,  and  it  is  the  least  interesting 
part.  One  can  sit  in  the  pilot  house  for 
a  few  hours  and  watch  the  low  shores, 
the  ungainly  trees  and  the  democratic 
buzzards,  and  then  one  might  as  well  go 
to  bed.  One  has  seen  everything  there 
is  to  see.  Along  the  upper  Mississippi 
every  hour  brings  something  new.  There 
are  crowds  cf  odd  islands,  bluffs,  prairies, 
hills,  woods  and  villages — everything  one 
could  desire  to  amuse  the  children. 
Few  people  ever  think  of  going  there, 
however.  Dickens,  Corbett,  Mother 
Trollope  and  the  other  discriminating 
Knglish  people  who  'wrote  up'  the 
country  before  1842  had  hardly  any  idea 
that  such  a  stretch  of  river  scenery  ex 
isted.  Their  successors  have  followed  in 
their  footsteps,  and  as  we  form  our 
opinions  of  our  country  from  what  other 
people  say  of  us,  of  course  we  ignore  the 
finest  part  of  the  Mississippi.' 

4 'At  this  moment  the  three  little  girls  in 
the  three  red  gowns  and  six  blue  stockings 
appeared,  and  Mr.  Clemens  assumed  the 
shape- of  an  crrmseraent  bureau." 


His  Life  and  Work.  187 

An  instance  of  his  home  life  is  the 
following  anecdote:  Having  been  asked 
to  contribute  to  a  newspaper  issued  at 
the  Fair  in  aid  of  the  abused  children  in 
Boston,  he  wrote:  "Why  should  I  want 
a  society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Children,  to  prosper,  when  I  have  a  baby 
downstairs  that  kept  me  awake  several 
hours  last  night,  with  no  pretext  for  it 
but  to  make  trouble?  This  occurs  every 
night,  and  it  embitters  me,  because  I  see 
how  needless  it  was  to  put  in  the  other 
burglar  alarm,  a  costly  and  complicated 
contrivance,  which  cannot  be  depended 
upon,  because  it's  always  getting  out  of 
order;  whereas,  although  the  baby  is  al 
ways  getting  out  of  order,  too,  it  can 
nevertheless  be  depended  on.  Yes,  I  am 
bitter  against  your  society,  for  I  think 
the  idea  of  it  is  all  wrong;  but,  if  you 
will  start  a  society  for  the  prevention  of 
cruelty  to  fathers,  I  will  write  you  a 
whole  book." 

At  a  Hartford  dinner  party  one  day, 
the  subject  of  eternal  life  and  future 
punishment  came  up  for  a  lengthy  dis- 


l88  Mark  Twain 

cussion,  in  which  Mark  Twain,  who  was 
present  took  no  part.  A  lady  near  him, 
turned  suddenly  toward  him  and  ex 
claimed  : 

"Why  do  you  not  say  anything?  I 
want  your  opinion." 

Mr.  Clemens  replied  gravely:  ' 'Mad 
am,  you  must. excuse  me,  I  am  silent  of 
necessity.  I  have  friends  in  both  places." 


His  Life  and  Work.  189 


IX 

A3  A  BUSINESS  MAE. 


A  million  copies  cf  Mark  Twain's 
books  have  been  sold  in  this  country. 
England  and  her  colonies  have  taken 
half  as  many  more,  and  the  larger  works 
have  been  translated  into  German, 
French,  Italian,  Norwegian  and  Danish. 
"Innocents  Abroad,"  "Roughing  It," 
"The  Gilded  Age,"  and  "A  Tramp 
Abroad,"  were  published  by  the  American 
Publishing  Company  of  Hartford.  "The 
Stolen  White  Elephant"  appeared  from 
the  presses  of  Osgood  of  Boston. 

The  humorist  has  often  said  that  if  he 
were  to  live  his  life  over  again,  he  would 
publish  his  own  books,  and  act  as  his 
own  business  manager,  thus  securing  a 
larger  share  of  the  profits  arising  from 


I  go  Mark  Twain 


the  sale  of  his  works.  The  manuscript 
of  the  '  'Adventures  of  Huckleberry  Finn" 
was  completed  in  March,  1884,  but  owing 
to  complications  and  differences  with  the 
publishers,  it  did  not  appear  until  the 
following  year,  although  a  prospectus  of 
the  story  was  sent  out,  and  the  opening 
chapter  published  in  the  Century  maga 
zine.  When  the  book  was  completed 
,Mr.  Clemens  made  a  proposition  in  re 
gard  to  its  publication  to  the  American 
Publishing  Company.  From  the  sale  of 
'his  earlier  works  this  firm  had  made  for 
itself  reputation  and  wealth.  Mark 
Twain,  on  his  side,  received  royalties 
amounting  in  all  to  over  four  hundred 
thousand  dollars.  When  "Huckleberry 
Finn,"  the  sequel  to  "Tom  Sawyer,"  was 
completed,  he  again  made  them  a  propo 
sition.  Negotiations  were  commenced 
but  never  completed.  The  parties  could 
not  agree  upon  terms.  He  was  offered 
liberal  royalties  but  refused  to  accept 
them.  The  final  offer  was  that  the 
profits  should  be  equally  divided,  each  of 
the  parties  to  receive  fifty  per  cent,  of 


His  Life  and  Work.  291 

the  proceeds  from  the  sale  of  the  new 
book.  This  proposition  was  not  satisfac 
tory  to  the  author,  who  wanted  sixty  per 
cent,  of  the  profits.  The  Company  re 
fused  to  accept  the  offer,  and  Mr.  Clemens 
determined  to  at  once  combine  the 
business  of  publisher  with  that  of  author. 
He  had  great  confidence  in  the  business 
ability  of  his  nephew,  Charles  I,.  Web 
ster  of  Fredonia,New  York.  With  him  he 
formed  a  partnership,  and  ' 'Huckleberry 
Finn"  appeared  bearing  the  imprint  of 
Charles  I,.  Webster  and  Company.  The 
result  was  watched  with  interest  by 
literary  men  and  publishers  all  over  the 
world.  '  'Huckleberry  Finn"  netted  the 
author  a  profit  of  nearly  $100,000.  Mr. 
Webster  died  a  few  years  since  but  the 
firm  name  remains  unchanged. 

Upon  his  earlier  books,  Mark  received 
upwards  of  $30,000  per  year,  for  a  num 
ber  of  years.  "Tom  Sawyer"  sold  better 
than  any  of  his  books  excepting  "Inno 
cents  Abroad."  When  the  ' 'Gilded  Age" 
was  dramatized  and  placed  on  the  stage  by 
John  T.  Raymond,  it  proved 'a  gold  mine 


Mark  Twain 


for  the  fortunate  author.  In  one  year 
Raymond  paid  Mark  over  $70,000  in 
royalties. 

He  never  dabbled  in  Wall  street 
stocks,  although  he  knew  whether 
Union  Pacific  or  Western  Union,  were 
up  or  down  and  why.  His  most  unfortu 
nate  investment  was  in  the  stock  of  an 
accident  insurance  company,  where  he 
had  invested  $50,000,  but  luckily  he 
saved  his  money  from  the  wreck.  His 
wife  had  a  large  fortune  in  her  own  right, 
but  so  far  as  Mark  Twain  was  concerned 
she  might  have  been  penniless,  for  he  in 
sisted  that  her  property  be  settled  upon 
herself  and  managed  for  her  interest  ex 
clusively.  He  has  made  his  own  fortune 
in  his  own  way,  and  has  never  had  to 
borrow  a  cent  from  any  one  in  his 
business  investments  since  the  "  Inno 
cents"  began  to  coin  money  for  him. 

The  firm  of  Charles  I,.  Webster  and 
Company  have  published  many  books  in 
addition  to  those  written  by  Mark  Twain. 
The  profits  in  the  "  Memoirs  of  General 
Grant"  and  those  of  the  Pope  were  enor- 


His  Life  and  Work. 


mous.  In  1884,  when  he  read  from  his 
own  works  with  George  W.  Cable,  his 
share  of  the  net  profits  was  $30,000 
He  invented  Mark  Twain's  Scrap  Book 
which  made  a  fortune  for  the  publishers. 
Nearly  a  million  copies  have  been  sold, 
and  his  profits  amount  to  $100,000.  He 
also  invented  a  note  book.  All  note 
books  that  he  could  buy  had  the  vicious 
habit  of  opening  at  the  wrong  place  and 
distracting  attention  in  that  way.  So, 
by  a  simple  contrivance,  he  arranged  one 
that  always  opens  at  the  right  place;  that 
is,  of  course,  at  the  page  last  written  up 
on.  Other  simple  inventions  of  Mark 
Twain's  include:  A  vest,  which  enables 
the  wearer  to  dispense  with  suspenders; 
a  shirt,  with  collars  and  cuffs  attached, 
which  requires  neither  buttons  nor  studs; 
a  perpetual-calendar  watch-charm,  which 
gives  the  day  of  the  week  and  of  the 
month;  and  a  game  whereby  people  may 
play  historical  dates  and  events  upon  a 
board,  somewhat  after  the  manner  of 
cribbage,  being  a  game  whose  office  is 
twofold  —  to  furnish  the  dates  and  events, 


Mark  Twain 


and  to  impress  them  permanently  upon 
the  memory. 

He  is  a  literary  Midas.  Everything 
he  has  touched  has  turned  to  gold,  not 
from  luck,  but  from  hard  work  and  with 
an  eye  to  business.  In  order  to  obtain 
the  "Grant  Memoirs"  for  publication,  he 
made  terms  with  the  Grant  family,  which 
other  publishers  did  not  dare  to  make. 
As  Twain  said:  "They  did  not  appreci 
ate  the  magnitude  of  the  occasion." 

After  he  had  become  a  business  man 
and  a  millionaire  he  was  elected  an 
honorary  member  of  the  Concord,  Mass., 
Free-Trade  Club,  and  in  acknowledging 
the  compliment  wrote  to  the  secretary  as 
follows: 

' '  It  does  look  as  if  Massachusetts  were 
in  a  fair  way  to  embarrass  me  with  kind 
nesses  this  year.  In  the  first  place*  a 
Massachusetts  judge  has  just  decided  in 
open  Court  that  a  Boston  publisher  may 
sell,  not  only  his  own  property  in  a  free 
and  unfettered  way,  but  also  may  as 
freely  sell  property  which  does  not  belong 
to  him,  but  to  me — property  which  he 


His  Life  and  Work. 


lias  not  bought,  and  which  I  have  not 
sold.  Under  this  ruling  I  am  now  ad 
vertising  that  judge's  homestead  for  sale, 
and  if  I  make  as  good  a  sum  out  of  it  as 
I  expect,  I  shall  go  on  and  sell  out  the 
rest  of  his  property.  In  the  next  place, 
a  committee  of  the  public  library  of  your 
town  have  condemned  and  excommuni 
cated  my  last  book  —  and  doubled  its 
sale.  .  .  And  finally,  the  Free-Trade 
Club  of  Concord  comes  forward  and  adds 
to  the  splendid  burden  of  obligations  al 
ready  conferred  upon  me  by  the  Common 
wealth  of  Massachusetts  an  honorary 
membership,  which  is  worth  more  than 
all  the  rest  just  at  this  juncture,  since  it 
endorses  me  as  worthy  to  associate  with 
certain  gentlemen  whom  even  the  moral 
icebergs  of  the  Concord  Library  Com 
mittee  are  bound  to  respect.  May  the 
great  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts 
endure  forever,  is  the  heartfelt  prayer  of 
one  who,  long  a  recipient  of  her  mere 
general  good  -will,  is  proud  to  realize  that 
he  is  £t  last  become  her  pet." 


ig6  Mark  Twain 


Mr.  Clemens  has  been  so  busily  en 
gaged  during  the  later  years  of  his  life, 
that  necessarily  his  book  work  and  his 
personal  correspondence  have  suffered. 
He  failed  to  answer  a  letter  written  by 
Sergeant  Ballantine,  the  English  author. 
After  waiting  a  reasonable  time  the  latter 
was  so  exasperated,  at  not  receiving  an 
answer,  that  he  mailed  Mark  a  sheet  of 
paper  and  a  postage  stamp,  as  a  gentle 
reminder.  Mr.  Clemens  wrote  back  on 
a  postal  card: 

"Paper  and  stamp  received.  Please 
send  an  envelope." 

To-day  in  healthful  middle  age, 
Samuel  I,.  Clemens  is  reaping  the  fruits 
of  a  long  and  varied  career.  He  has  been 
a  printer,  steamboat  pilot,  private  secre 
tary,  miner,  reporter,  lecturer,  inventor, 
author,  publisher  and  capitalist.  He  is 
one  of  the  few  living  persons  with  a 
truly  world-wide  reputation.  As  Miss 
Gilder  has  truthfully  and  wittily  re 
marked:  "Unless  the  excellent  gentle 
men,  engaged  in  revising  the  Scriptures, 
should  claim  the  authorship  of  their 


His  Life  and  Work. 


work,  there  is  no  other  living  writer, 
whose  books  are  now  so  widely  read  as 
Mark  Twain's;  and  it  may  not  be  out  of 
the  way  to  add  that  in  more  than  onar 
pious  household,  the  "Innocents  Abroad/* 
is  laid  beside  the  family  Bible,  and  re* 
ferred  to  as  a  hand  book  of  Holy 
description  and  narrative." 


Mark  Twain 


GEMS  PEOM  MAEK  TWAIN. 


COLLECTED  FROM  HIS  PUBLISHED  WORKS,  FUGI 
TIVE  SKETCHES,  LECTURES,  SPEECHES 
AND  CORRESPONDENCE. 

"Be  virtuous  and  you  will  be  eccen 
tric." 

"The  train  is  profusely  decorated  with 
tunnels." 

"A  tortoise-shell  cat  having  a  fit  in  a 
platter  of  tomatoes." 

"Figures  stew  out  of  me  just  as  natural 
as  the  otter  of  roses  out  of  the  otter." 

"There  is  no  bird,  or  cow,  or  anything 
that  uses  as  good  grammar  as  a  blue-jay." 

"I  wouldn't  give  a  cent  to  hear  Inger- 
soll  on  Moses,  but  I'd  give  ten  dollars  to 
hear  Moses  on  Ingersoll." 


His  Life  and  Work. 


"One  could  see  the  dress  creeping 
along  the  floor  some  time  after  the  woman 
was  gone." 

"When  the  musing  spider  steps  on  to 
the  red-hot  shovel,   he  first  exhibits 
wild  surprise,  then  he  shrivels.  n 

*  'I  left  my  rheumatism  there.     Baden- 
Baden  is  welcome  to  it.     It  was  little,; 
but  it  was  all  I  had  to  give.     I  should 
have    liked   to   leave    something    more 
catching,  but  it  was  not  in  my  power/1    , 

*  'I  tried  him   with   mild  jokes,    then 
with  severe  ones;  I  dosed  him  with  bad 
jokes,  and  riddled  him  with  good  ones;  1 
fired  old  stale  jokes  into  him,  and  pep 
pered  him  fore  and  aft  with  red-hot  ones.1 
I  warmed  up  to  my  work,  and  assaulted 
him  on  the  right  and  left,  in  front  and 
behind;  I  fumed,  and  charged,  and  ranted, 
till  I  was  sick,    and   frantic  and  furious; 
but  I  never  moved  him   once  —  I   never 
started  a  smile  or  a  tear!     Never  a  ghost 
of  a  smile,    and    never  a  suspicion  of 
moisture!     He  was  deaf,  and  dumb,  and 
blind  as  a  badger." 


200  Mark  Twain 


"He  was  deeply  and  sincerely  pious, 
and  swore  like  a  fish  woman." 

"He  was  frescoed  from  head  to  heel 
with  pictures  and  mottoes  tatooed  in  red 
and  blue  India  ink.'" 

' 'There  were  no  hackmen,  hacks  or 
omnibuses  on  the  pier.  I  said  it  was 
like  being  in  heaven." 
'  "  Palestine  sits  in  sackcloth  and  ashes. 
Over  it  broods  the  spell  of  a  curse  that 
has  withered  its  fields  and  fettered  its 
energies." 

i  * 'Formerly,  to  be  a  Californian  was  to 
be  a  speculator.  A  man  could  not  help 
it.  One  man  tried  to  be  otherwise,  but 
be  was  only  kicking  against  fate.  While 
everybody  was  wild  with  a  spirit  of  spec 
ulation,  and  full  of  plans  for  making  sud 
den  fortunes,  he  said  he  would  farm 
along  quietly,  and  slowly  gain  a  modest 
competence,  and  so  be  happy.  But  his 
first  crop  of  onions  happened  to  be  about 
the  only  onions  produced  that  year.  He 
3old  it  for  a  hundred  thousand  dollars 
and  retired." 


His  Life  and  Work.  2OT 

"A  small  company,  but  small  com 
panies  are  pleasantest. " 

"He  was  full  of  blessed  egotism  and 
placid  self-importance,  but  he  didn't 
know  as  much  as  a  3-em  quad." 

"A  cat  that  eat  up  an  entire  box  of 
Seidlitz  powders,  and  then  hadn't  any 
more  judgment  than  to  go  and  take  a 
drink." 

"It  is  the  nature  of  woman  to  ask 
trivial,  irrelevant  and  pursuing  ques 
tions, — questions  that  pursue  you  from  a 
beginning  in  nothing  to  a  run-to-cover  in 
nowhere." 

"We  walked  out  into  the  grass  grown, 
fragment-strewn  court  beyond  the  Parthe 
non.  It  startled  us  every  now  and  then, 
to  see  a  stony  white  face  stare  suddenly 
up  at  us  out  of  the  grass  with  its  dead. 
The  place  seemed  alive  with  ghosts.  I 
half  expected  to  see  the  Athenian  heroes 
of  twenty  centuries  ago  glide  out  of  the 
shadows,  and  steal  into  the  old  temple 
they  knew  so  well  and  regarded  with 
such  boundless  pride." 


202  Mark  Twain 


" At  sea.  Now  came  the  resurrection 
hour,  the  berths  gave  up  their  dead. 
These  pale  spectres  in  plug  hats  file  up 
the  companion  way." 

'  'Age  enlarges  and  enriches  the  powers 
of  some  musical  instruments, — notably 
those  of  the  violin, — but  it  seems  to  set  a 
piano's  teeth  on  edge." 

"I  am  a  Yankee  of  the  Yankees,  a 
practical  man,  nearly  barren  of  sentiment 
or  poetry — in  other  words,  my  father  was 
a,  blacksmith,  my  uncle  was  a  horse 
doctor,  and  I  was  both." 

"He  found  that  the  'education  of  the 
nineteenth  century  is  plenty  good  enough 
capital  to  go  into  business  in  the  sixth 
century  with/  and  the  next  year  he  was 
running  the  kingdom  all  by  himself  on  a 
moderate  royalty  of  forty  per  cent." 

'  'There  didn't  seem  to  be  brains  enough 
in  the  entire  nursery  to  bait  a  fish-hook, 
but  you  didn't  mind  that  after  a  little 
while,  for  you  saw  that  brains  were  not 
Deeded  in  a  society  like  that,  and  would 
have  marred  its  symmetry  and  spoiled  it." 


His  Life  and  Work.  2OJ 

'This  vile  bit  of  human  rubbish." 

4 Chambermaids     are    dead    to    every 
human  instinct." 

"A  forlorn  dog,  with  bowed  head,  and 
tail  withdrawn  from  service." 

"When  a  man  has  been  fifty  years  at 
sea,  he  is  only  a  gray  and  bearded  child." 

"He  was  a  man  with  a  hair  lip,  and  a 
pure  heart,  and  everybody  said  he  was 
true  as  steel." 

"To  the  Indian,  soap  and  education 
are  not  as  sudden  as  a  massacre,  but  they 
are  more  deadly  in  the  long  run.'* 

"They  appointed  me  clerk  of  the  com 
mittee  on  conchology,  and  then  allowed 
me  no  amanuensis  to  play  billiards  with." 

"If  there  was  a  horse-race,  you'd  find 
him  flush  or  you'd  find  him  busted  at  the 
end  of  it;  if  there  was  a  dog-fight,  he'd 
bet  on  it;  if  there  was  a  cat-fight,  he'd 
bet  on  it;  if  there  was  a  chicken-fight, 
he'd  bet  on  it;  why,  if  there  were  two 
birds  sitting  on  a  fence,  he  would  bet 
you  which  one  would  fly  first." 


2O4  Mark  Twain 


"If  I  had  another  cold  in  the  head,  and 
there  was  no  course  left  me  but  to  take 
either  an  earthquake  or  a  quart  of  warm 
salt  water,  I  would  take  my  chances  on 
the  earthquake." 

"Ah,  to  think  of  it,  only  to  think  of  it! 
— the  poor  old  faithful  creature.  For  she 
was  so  faithful.  Would  you  believe  it, 
she  had  been  a  servant  in  that  self-same 
house  and  that  self-same  family  for 
twenty-seven  years  come  Christmas,  and 
never  a  cross  word  and  never  a  lick! 
And,  oh,  to  think  she  should  meet  such 
a  death  at  last! — a  sitting  over  the  red- 
hot  stove  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
and  went  to  sleep  and  fell  on  it  and  was 
actually  roasted!  Not  just  frizzled  up  a 
bit,  but  literally  roasted  to  a  crisp!  Poor 
faithful  creature,  how  she  was  cooked  ! 
I  am  but  a  poor  woman,  but  even  if  I 
have  to  scrimp  to  do  it,  I  will  put  up  a 
tombstone  over  that  lone  sufferer's  grave 
— and  Mr.  Riley,  if  you  would  have  the 
goodness  to  think  up  a  little  epitaph  to 
put  on  it  which  would  sort  of  describe 
the  awful  way  in  which  she  met  her " 


Ills  Life  and  Work.  2OJ 

"Put  it,  'Well  done,  good  and  faithful 
servant! '  said  Riley,  and  never  smiled.1  " 

4 'The  less  a  man  knows  the  bigger 
noise  he  makes  and  the  higher  salary  he 
commands." 

"Who  can  join  in  the  heartless  libel 
that  says  woman  is  extravagant  in  dress 
when  he  can  look  back  and  call  to  mind 
our  simple  and  lowly  mother  Eve  arrayed 
in  her  modification  of  the  Highland 
costume. " 

"He  buys  the  original  pig  for  a  dollar 
and  a  half,  and  feeds  him  forty  dollars' 
worth  of  corn,  and  then  sells  him  for 
about  nine  dollars.  This  is  the  only  crop 
he  ever  makes  any  money  on.  He  loses 
on  the  corn,  but  he  makes  seven  and  a 
half  on  the  hog." 

"He  stood  bewildered  a  moment,  with 
a  sense  of  goneness  on  him  like  one  who 
finds  himself  suddenly  overboard  upon  a 
midnight  sea,  and  beholds  the  ship  pass 
into  shrouding  gloom,  while  the  dreadful 
conviction  falls  upon  his  soul  that  he  has 
not  been  missed." 


206  Mark  Twain 


"Just  a  hunk  of  brains,  that's  what  he 
was." 

"He  will  eat  a  man,  he  will  eat  a 
Bible, — he  will  eat  anything  between  a 
man  and  a  Bible." 

"He  wrote  with  impressive  flatulence 
and  soaring  confidence  upon  the  vastest 
subjects;  but  puffing  alms-gifts  of  wed 
ding  cake,  salty  ice  cream,  abnormal 
watermelons,  and  sweet  potatoes  the  size 
of  your  leg  was  his  best  hold." 

"Tom  appeared  on  the  sidewalk  with 
a  bucket  of  whitewash  and  a  long-handled 
brush.  He  surveyed  the  fence,  and  all 
gladness  left  him,  and  a  deep  melancholy 
settled  down  upon  his  spirit.  Thirty 
yards  of  board  fence  nine  feet  high.  Life 
to  him  seemed  hollow,  and  existence  but 
a  burden.  Sighing,  he  dipped  his  brush 
and  passed  it  along  the  topmost  plank; 
repeated  the  operation ;  did  it  again;  com 
pared  the  insignificant  whitewashed 
streak  with  the  far-reaching  continent  of 
tmwhitewashed  fence,  and  sat  down  on 
the  tree-box  discouraged." 


His  Life  and  Work. 


"It  was  just  like  a  new  author,  s.  They 
always  think  that  they  know  more  than 
anybody  else  when  they  are  getting  out 
their  first  book." 

"For  weeks  she  nursed  her  grief  in 
silence,  while  the  roses  faded  from  her 
cheeks.  And  through  it  all  she  clung  to 
the  hope  that  some  day  the  old  love 
would  bloom  again  in  Reginald's  heart, 
and  he  would  write  to  her;  but  the  long 
summer  days  dragged  wearily  along,  and 
still  no  letter  came.  The  newspapers 
teemed  with  stories  of  battle  and  carnage, 
e  and  eagerly  she  read  them,  but  always 
with  the  same  result:  the  tears  welled  up 
and  blurred  the  closing  lines  —  the  name 
she  sought  was  looked  for  in  vain,  and 
the  dull  aching  returned  to  her  sinking 
heart.  Letters  to  the  other  girls  some 
times  contained  brief  mention  ot  him, 
and  presented  always  the  same  picture  of 
him  —  a  morose,  unsmiling,  desperate 
man,  always  in  the  thickest  of  the  fight, 
begrimed  with  powder,  and  moving  calm 
and  unscathed  through  tempests  of  shot 
and  shell,  as  if  he  bore  a  charmed  life." 


208  Mark  Twain 


"A  cross  between  a  tired  mud  turtle 
and  a  crippled  hearse  horse." 

"He  means  well,  but  art  is  folly  to 
him;  he  only  understands  groceries." 

"His  strawberries  would  be  a  comfort 
able  success  if  the  robins  would  eat  tur 
nips,  but  they  won't,  and  hence  the 
difficulty." 

*  'Having  forgotten  to  mention  it  sooner, 
I  will  remark,  in  conclusion,  that  the 
ages  of  the  Siamese  Twins "  are  respec 
tively  fifty-one  and  fifty-three  years." 

1 'I  found  the  brave  fellow  in  a  pro 
found  French  calm.  I  say  French  cairn, 
because  French  calmness  and  English 
calmness  have  points  of  difference.  He 
was  moving  swiftly  back  and  forth 
among  the  debris  of  his  furniture,  now 
and  then  staving  chance  fragments  of  it 
across  the  room  with  his  foot;  grinding  a 
constant  prist  of  curses  through  his  set 
teeth;  anl  halting  every  little  while  to 
deposit  another  handful  of  his  hair  on 
the  pile  which  he  had  been  building  of  it 
on  the  table." 


His  Life  and  Work.  20? 

"The  place  is  as  dark  as  the  inside  of 
an  infidel." 

"She  was  a  perfect  polyglot  once,  but 
somehow  her  palate  got  down." 

"And  so  saying,  he  turned  his  face  to 
the  wall  and  gave  up  the  ghost." 

"We  write  frankly  and  fearlessly,  but 
then  we  'modify'  before  we  print." 

"Oh,  I  know  him.  A  sallow-faced,, 
red-headed  fellow,  with  a  little  scar  on 
the  side  of  his  throat  like  a  splinter  under 
the  flesh." 

"A  woman  who  could  face  the  aevil 
himself — or  a  mouse — loses  her  grip  and 
goes  all  to  pieces  in  front  of  a  flash  of 
lightning." 

"He  was  a  man  of  middle  size  and 
compact  frame,  and  when  he  was  think 
ing  deeply,  he  had  a  way  of  knitting  his 
brows  and  tapping  his  forehead  reflec 
tively  with  his  finger,  which  impressed 
you  at  once  with  the  conviction  that  you 
stood  in  the  presence  of  a  person  of  no 
common  order." 


2IO  Mark  Twain 


"The  poem  is  smooth  and  blubbery;  it 
reads  like  buttermilk  gurgling  from  a 
jug." 

"A  sincere  compliment  is  always  grate 
ful  to  a  young  lady,  so  long  as  you  don't 
try  to  knock  her  down  with  it." 

"Cain  is  branded  a  murderer  so  heart 
lessly  and  unanimously  in  America,  only 
because  he  was  neither  a  Democrat  nor  a 
Republican." 

"A  long  cadaverous  creature,  with 
lanky  locks  hanging  down  to  his 
shoulders,  and  a  week's  stubble  bristling 
from  the  hills  and  valleys  of  his  face." 

'Epitaphs  are  cheap,  and  they  do  a 
poor  chap  a  world  of  good  after  he  is  dead, 
especially  if  he  had  hard  luck  while  he 
was  alive.  I  wish  they  were  used  more." 

"I  do  not  know  how  it  came  about  ex 
actly,  but  gradually  we  appeared  to  melt 
down  and  run  together,  conversationally 
•  speaking,    and    then    everything     went 
along  as  comfortably  as  clockwork." 


His  Life  and  Work.  211 


"  Your  conscience  is  a  nuisance.  A 
conscience  is  like  a  child.  If  you  pet  it 
and  play  with  it  and  let  it  have  every 
thing  it  wants,  it  becomes  spoiled  and 
intrudes  on  all  of  your  amusements  and 
most  of  your  griefs.  Treat  your  con 
science  as  you  would  treat  anything  else. 
When  it  is  rebellious,  spank  it — be  se 
vere  with  it,  airgue  with  it,  prevent  it  from 
coming  to  play  with  you  at  all  hours — 
and  you  will  secure  a  good  conscience. 
That  is  to  say,  a  properly  trained  one. 
A  spoiled  conscience  simply  destroys  all 
the  pleasure  in  life.  I  think  I  have  re 
duced  min  to  order.  At  least  I  haven't 
heard  from  it  for  some  time.  Perhaps 
I've  killed  it  through  over-severity.  It's 
wrong  to  kill  a  child,  but  in  spite  of  all  I 
have  said,  a  conscience  differs  from  a 
child  in  many  ways.  Perhaps  it  is  best 
when  it  is  dead." 


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